THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Micere Keels is a Professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on understanding how race, ethnicity, and poverty structure the supports and challenges that children and youth experience. She is particularly invested in systems-change interventions that can narrow intergenerational inequities. For over two decades, she has worked to integrate mental health promotion interventions into educational systems and institutions. She is the founding director of the Trauma Responsive Educational Practices Project, a research-translation and research-practice-partnership that aims to connect research on the science of trauma with the realities of school and classroom management. Through the TREP Project, she has supported the professional development of over 200,000 educators through school district partnerships in California, Delaware, Illinois, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island, and through work with many individual schools across the U.S. This work has resulted in three books: Trauma Responsive Educational Practices: Helping Students Cope and Learn; Trauma Responsive De-escalation: Evidence-Based Strategies That Work in the Classroom; and Your Guide to Educator Self-care: A Self-care Graphic Organizer. She is currently engaged in a research-practice partnership with Compass Health Center that focuses on improving the educational outcomes of students experiencing mental health distress.
Recent Research / Recent Publications
Keels, M. (2020). Campus Counterspaces: Black and Latinx Students’ Search for Community at Historically White Universities. Cornell University Press.
Offidani-Bertrand, C., Velez, G., Benz, C. & Keels, M. (2020). “I wasn’t expecting it”: High School Experiences and Navigating Belonging in the Transition to College. Emerging Adulthood.
Durkee, M. I., Gazley, E., Hope, E. C. & Keels, M. (2019) Cultural Invalidations: Deconstructing the "Acting White" Phenomenon among Black & Latinx College Students. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology.
Keels, M., Durkee, M. I., & Hope, E. C. (2017). The Psychological and Academic Costs of School-Based Racial and Ethnic Microaggressions. American Educational Research Journal.
Hope, E. C., Velez, G., Bertrand, C. O., Keels, M., & Durkee, M. I. (2017). Political Activism and Mental Health among Black and Latinx College Students. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology.
Hope, E. C., Keels, M., & Durkee, M. I. (2016). Participation in Black Lives Matter & Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals: Modern Activism among Black & Latino College Students. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 9(3), 203-215.
Ghee, M., Keels, M., Collins, D., Spence, C. N., & Baker, E. (2016). Fine-Tuning Summer Research Programs to Promote Underrepresented Students’ Persistence in STEM Pathway. CBE – Life Sciences Education, 15(3).
Keels, M. (2012). Getting Them Enrolled is Only Half the Battle: College Success at the Intersection of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Class. Prepared for Boys of Color Collaborative
DeLuca, S., Duncan, G., Keels, M., & Mendenhall, R. (2010). Gautreaux Mothers and their Children: An Update. Housing Policy Debate. 20, 7-25.
Keels, M. (2009). Ethnic Group Differences in Early Head Start Parents’ Parenting Beliefs and Practices and the Link to Children’s Early Cognitive Development. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 24(4), 381-397.
Keels, M., G. Duncan, R. Mendenhall, S. Deluca, & J. Rosenbaum. (2005). Fifteen Years Later: Can Residential Mobility Programs Provide a Permanent Escape from Neighborhood Segregation, Crime, and Poverty? Demography, 42, 51-73.