Kate Somerville, Ph.D., is an IES Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School Mental Health Collaborative at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her interdisciplinary research uses youth-engaged methods to examine how education policy and school environments shape youth well-being. Drawing on health equity and prevention frameworks, she centers youth expertise in efforts to promote thriving in schools and communities. Her work critically examines the policy conditions that enable or constrain equity-minded change in school mental health, including the role of school leaders, as well as how school discipline systems affect young people. Dr. Somerville has expertise in youth participatory action research (YPAR) and studies how these methods can promote well-being and drive systems change. This includes developing approaches for facilitating YPAR that are rigorous, culturally responsive, and accessible to youth-serving professionals. Her published work also includes machine learning analyses of large-scale linked administrative data, identifying early predictors of school discipline and legal system involvement to inform preventive intervention.
Dr. Somerville earned her Ph.D. in Educational Foundations, Policy, & Practice from the University of Colorado Boulder, where her dissertation was a finalist for the AERA Division L (Educational Policy and Politics) Outstanding Dissertation Award. She previously served as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Youth-Nex at the University of Virginia. She holds an M.A. in Teaching from Johns Hopkins University, began her career as an elementary school teacher in Baltimore City Public Schools, and has since taught undergraduate courses on schools and society. Her research is supported by an NIH Loan Repayment Program award in Pediatric Research through the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).
Her scholarship has been published in AERA Open, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Prevention Science, and the American Educational Research Journal. Committed to making research accessible, her work has also been featured by AERA Trending Topic Research, UCLA Center X’s Just News series, and The Washington Post.
A former NCAA Division III lacrosse player and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar, Dr. Somerville is committed to advancing youth-engaged, policy-relevant research at the intersection of education and public health.
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