Mira Debs is the Director of the Education Studies Program and a lecturer in Sociology. She teaches EDST 110 Foundations in Education Studies, EDST 282/PSLC 417 Comparative International Education, and advises senior capstones.
Dr. Debs graduated from the University of Chicago, and received a Rhodes Scholarship to complete an MPhil in European Politics and teacher training from Oxford University. In 2016, she received a PhD in Sociology from Yale.
Dr. Debs’ research looks at how parents and communities construct social meaning through their schools and other communal sites. Her research, teaching, and policy interests include school integration, comparative international education, urban education, school choice, parent involvement, and progressive public schools. She has conducted research in locations including New York City, Hartford, Germany, India, Denmark and Singapore.
Research from her book, Diverse Parents, Desirable Schools: Public Montessori in an Era of School Choice (Harvard Education Press, 2019) has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Ed Week, and the Christian Science Monitor. She is the co-editor of the Bloomsbury Handbook of Montessori Education (2023).
Her work has been published in the American Journal of Education, Teachers College Record, the American Education Research Journal, History of Education Quarterly, Comparative Education, Research in Comparative and International Education, and the Journal of Montessori Research. Dr. Debs’ other studies have examined how groups form collective identity with case studies on Italian art and India’s independence struggle published in Cultural Sociology, Nations and Nationalism. Her research has been funded by the Spencer Foundation, the Brady Foundation and WEND Ventures.
Prior to graduate school, Dr. Debs taught high school in Boston area public schools. She serves on the Yale Prison Education Advisory Committee, she helped to create Elm City Montessori School in New Haven in 2014 and served as a board member for 10 years. She plays viola in the New Haven Civic Orchestra.