Faculty Profiles
Molly Hamm-Rodr铆guez
Assistant Professor, Social Foundations of Education
Email: mhammrodriguez@usf.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Molly Hamm-Rodr铆guez is an Assistant Professor of Social Foundations of Education specializing in anthropology of education and comparative and international education. Dr. Hamm-Rodr铆guez uses critical and sociocultural theoretical perspectives across two focus areas, with a regional emphasis on coastal communities in the U.S., Caribbean, and Latin America. She has worked in the Dominican Republic since 2011.
The first strand of research explores the relationships between language, racialization, social class, gender, immigration status, labor, and schooling as they shape the social futures of youth in global school-to-work and college and career readiness programs. The second strand of research engages with the layered contexts that influence multilingual development in and out of schools as children and youth negotiate learning and their livelihoods within broader contexts of state, national, and international development policy and practice.
Dr. Hamm-Rodr铆guez uses ethnography, archival methods, oral histories, community-based and youth participatory action research, and discourse analysis. Her research has been supported by the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and CUNY Dominican Studies Institute. Her research priorities are developed through reciprocal relationships that center youth and community voices as well as through research-practice partnerships with schools, districts, and community-based organizations. Her work has been published in Anthropology & Education Quarterly; Applied Linguistics; archipelagos: A journal of Caribbean digital praxis; CENTRO: Journal for Puerto Rican Studies; Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy; Language Arts; Learning, Culture, and Social Action; TESOL Journal; TESOL Quarterly; and The Reading Teacher.
Dr. Hamm-Rodr铆guez was a 2023 Concha Delgado Gait谩n Presidential Fellow with the Council
on Anthropology and Education. Her dissertation, entitled Re-Storying Paradise: Language, Imperial Formations of Tourism, and Youth Futures
in the Dominican Republic, received the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the School of Education at the
University of Colorado Boulder and the Gail P. Kelly Dissertation Award from the Comparative
and International Society. It also earned Honorable Mention for the Frederick Erickson
Dissertation Award from the Council on Anthropology and Education and was a Finalist
for the American Association for Applied Linguistics Dissertation Award.
Dr. Hamm-Rodr铆guez completed a Ph.D. in Educational Equity and Cultural Diversity
from the University of Colorado Boulder鈥檚 School of Education, earning graduate certificates
in Culture, Language, and Social Practice (Department of Linguistics) and Critical
Ethnic Studies (Department of Ethnic Studies). She holds an M.A. in International
Educational Development from Teachers College, Columbia University. She also completed
a B.A. in English and B.S. in Secondary Education (6th-12th grade English language
arts teaching license) at Kansas State University.