Dr. Alexandra Freidus

Dr. Alexandra Freidus is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education. Her research examines how educators, policies, young people, and their families sustain and interrupt racial inequality in public schools. Using community engaged research, participant-observation, interviews, and public archives, she asks how community stakeholders conceptualize racial equity; how school and district administrators enact educational policies; and how these interlocking contexts relate to schools’ central work — teaching and learning.

Alex’s book, Unequal Lessons: School Diversity and Educational Inequality in New York City (NYU Press, 2025) centers the experiences of young people as learners and policy actors to demonstrate the possibilities and constraints of school diversity as a strategy for educational justice. Her research has been funded by the National Academy of Education, the Spencer Foundation, and American Institutes for Research. She has published articles in peer-reviewed journals including American Educational Research Journal, Harvard Educational Review, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Educational Researcher, Teachers College Record, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, and Educational Policy. Her scholarship has received awards from the American Educational Research Association and the Council on Anthropology and Education and has been cited by news outlets such as The Washington Post, USA Today, and Bloomberg.

Prior to joining UConn, Alex was an Assistant Professor in the College of Education and Human Services at Seton Hall University. Before becoming a professor, Alex taught high school social studies, led professional development, and supported school reform efforts in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City for over fifteen years. Her professional experiences in K-12 deeply inform her teaching and her research. She currently teaches courses on educational policy and qualitative research to graduate students. Alex completed her Ph.D. in Urban Education at New York University, her M.A. in Education from Mills College, and her B.A. in History from Brown University. When she’s not teaching or writing, Alex loves spending time with her partner and their two young sons, running, cooking, and reading mysteries.