Micere Keels

Micere Keels is an associate professor of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago, where her work focuses on educational inequality, race and ethnicity, and the effects of poverty on developmental and educational outcomes. She received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University in 2005 and directs the Trauma Responsive Educational Practices (TREP) Project, a research–practice initiative that connects brain and behavior research on developmental trauma with school and classroom practices.

Keels is the author of Trauma Responsive Educational Practices: Helping Students Cope and Learn, as well as Campus Counterspaces: Search for Community at Historically White Institutions, Trauma Responsive De-Escalation, and Your Guide to Educator Self-Care. For over two decades, she has worked on integrating mental health–promotion interventions into educational systems from early childhood through high school, with a particular emphasis on building school and educator capacity to support students coping with trauma and toxic stress.