Biography
Professor Gerald Campano studies how research conducted in partnership with educators, families, and communities can advance educational justice while generating new knowledge about teaching and learning. Through work that spans literacy, immigrant education, critical ethnic studies, and participatory inquiry, he has helped shape community-engaged research as both a scholarly methodology and a catalyst for educational change.
Before entering higher education, Campano taught in under-resourced public schools for nearly a decade, earning district teacher of the year honors and recognition as a Carnegie Scholar. Those experiences continue to inform his work, which is grounded in the belief that research is most powerful when it is conducted alongside the people and communities it seeks to serve. Throughout his career, he has argued for universalizing research as an epistemic right through community-based inquiry premised on an ethics of care and interdependence.
Campano was named a 2026 fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), one of the field’s highest honors recognizing exceptional contributions to education research. His collaborative scholarship (with María Paula Ghiso) has been recognized with the 2026 Diane Lapp–James Flood Professional Collaborator Award from the International Literacy Association, honoring a sustained scholarly partnership that has significantly shaped literacy education. His co-authored book Methods for Community-Based Research received the 2026 AERA Division G Luis Moll Creative Work/Book Award. His first book, Immigrant Students and Literacy: Reading, Writing, and Remembering, received the 2009 David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English from the National Council of Teachers of English, while Partnering with Immigrant Communities: Action Through Literacy received both the David H. Russell Award (2018) and the Edward B. Fry Book Award (2017) from the Literacy Research Association. In 2024 Campano was honored with the Steven Witte Lifetime Achievement Award from the AERA Writing and Literacies SIG.
Campano is a former president of the National Council of Research on Language and Literacy and was a co-editor of Research in the Teaching of English. At Penn GSE, he served as chair of Penn GSE’s literacy division for nine years and previously co-convened the Ethnography in Education Research Forum.
He has directed more than 45 doctoral dissertations and has been a member of over 100 dissertation committees. In 2021 he received the Spencer Foundation Mentor Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to doctoral education and academic mentorship.
Education
- Ph.D. (Reading/Writing/Literacy) University of Pennsylvania, 2003
- B.A. (English) Cornell University, 1991
Areas of Expertise
- Immigrant identities and education
- Critical literacies
- Practitioner research
- School-university partnerships
- Urban education
Academic Programs
Education Entrepreneurship, M.S.Ed. Literacy Studies, Ed.D. Literacy Studies, M.S.Ed. Literacy Studies, Ph.D. Mid-Career Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership, Ed.D. Reading Specialist CertificationResearch Interests and Current Projects
Campano’s research examines how educators, families, and communities work together to create more equitable educational opportunities through participatory and community-based inquiry. His work spans literacy education, immigrant and transnational communities, critical ethnic studies, practitioner research, and research methodologies that position community members as collaborators in the production of knowledge.
His current work centers on a collaboration with colleagues at the University of Guadalajara and educators across Mexico. Together, they work alongside teachers serving Indigenous communities, return migrants, LGBTQ+ youth, and other historically marginalized populations to explore literacy teacher education through transnational and decolonial perspectives. Campano has also led Penn GSE students in international learning experiences connected to this work, strengthening cross-cultural collaboration and preparing future educators and researchers to engage in community-based scholarship across national boundaries.
This international collaboration builds on more than a decade of research–practice partnerships with immigrant communities in South Philadelphia, supported by the Spencer Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, and the American Educational Research Association.
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