Professor of English

Dr. Morrell is the Coyle Professor in Literacy Education and Director of the Center for Literacy Education at the University of Notre Dame. He was recently named director of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) James R. Squire Office for Policy Research in the English Language Arts. He is an elected Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, a past president of NCTE, and a co-convener of the African Diaspora International Research Network.

From 2015-2019 Dr. Morrell was ranked among the top 200 university-based education scholars in the RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings published by EdWeek. Dr. Morrell is also the recipient of the NCTE Distinguished Service Award, the Kent Williamson Leadership Award from the Conference on English Leadership, and the Divergent Award for Excellence in 21st Century Literacies. His scholarly interests include literacy studies, the teaching of English, literature for children, critical media pedagogy, youth popular culture, and postcolonial literatures of the African Diaspora. 

Dr. Morrell has authored over 90 articles, research briefs, and book chapters and ten books. He received his Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Culture from the University of California, Berkeley. He is chair of the Planning and Advisory Committee for the African Diaspora Consortium and also sits on the Executive Boards of LitWorld and the Education for Democracy Institute.

Recent books and articles include:

• (2018). Educating Harlem: Schooling and Resistance in an American Community. New York: Columbia University Press.
• (2016). Doing youth participatory action research: Transforming Inquiry for researchers, educators, and students. New York: Routledge.
• (2015). New Directions in Teaching English: Reimagining Teaching, Teacher Education and Research. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
• (2017). Towards equity and diversity in literacy research, policy, and practice: A critical, global approach. Journal of Literacy Research, 49 (3)
• (2017). Confronting the digital divide: Debunking brave new world discourses. The Reading Teacher. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1603