Faculty Profile

BIO

Elizabeth Birr Moje is dean, the George Herbert Mead Collegiate Professor of Education, and  an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture in the Marsal Family School  of Education. Moje teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in secondary and adolescent  literacy, cultural theory, and research methods and was awarded the Provost’s Teaching  Innovation Prize with colleague, Bob Bain, in 2010.  

A former high school history and biology teacher, Moje’s research examines young people’s  culture, identity, and literacy learning in and out of school in Detroit, Michigan, with a particular  focus on how youth learn and enact the literacies they need for specific domains, including  those of school disciplines. By documenting youth literacy practices and learning outside of  schools in communities, youth popular cultural groups, and in online settings, Moje helps  teachers of school disciplines consider how the disciplinary domains are like cultural settings in  which certain linguistic and interactional norms and conventions dictate access, participation,  and membership. Teachers of different disciplines can serve as cultural brokers who help  novices entering a new disciplinary domain to navigate within and across the school disciplines.  Teachers can also build on and draw from the domain-specific strategies and assets that youth  bring to school from families, popular culture, and their communities. 

Moje has published 5 books and numerous articles in journals such as Science, Harvard  Educational Review, Teachers College Record, Reading Research Quarterly, Socius, Journal of  Literacy Research, Review of Education Research, Journal of Research in Science  Teaching, Science Education, International Journal of Science Education, Journal of Adolescent  & Adult Literacy, and the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. Moje’s research projects have been or are currently funded by the National Institutes of Health/NICHD,  John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, National Science Foundation, William T. Grant  Foundation, Spencer Foundation, International Reading Association, and the National Academy  of Education. Moje is a member of the William T. Grant Foundation Board of Trustees, an  elected member of the National Academy of Education, and an elected member of the Reading  Hall of Fame. She is recipient of the Oscar Causey Award for Distinguished Contributions in  Literacy Research from the Literacy Research Association (2022); the Senior Career  Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Council of Research on Language and Literacy  (2023), and the John J. Gumperz Memorial Award for Distinguished Lifetime Scholarship from  the American Educational Research Association (2024). She also was recognized among  Crain’s Detroit Business’ Notable Leaders in Higher Education in 2023. 

In September 2018, together with the Detroit Public Schools Community District and the Kresge  Foundation, Moje announced Marsal Education’s participation in the development of a cradle-to career education system, the Marygrove Learning Community: A Detroit P-20 Partnership. As a  co-founder of this collaboration, Moje leads a research-practice partnership and the Michigan  

Education Teaching School on site at Marygrove. This vertically aligned education continuum  now supports the learning of children and families from before birth through age 5 as well as  grades K-5, 9-12, and postsecondary educator preparation. The schools will continue to add  one grade per year and until they have a comprehensive prenatal through grade 12 set of  offerings for children and families in Detroit.