Maya Cohen is a fourth-year PhD student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she studies youth civic formation and the relationship between civic education and democratic resilience. Specifically, her work explores the question: What role can (and should) civic education play in addressing the longstanding weaknesses, current threats, and new possibilities confronting American democracy? She is especially interested in the ways student voices can contribute to this inquiry. While at HGSE, Maya has worked as a graduate researcher at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, where she has helped launch the Intercollegiate Civil Disagreement Partnership. She was awarded the Safra Center’s Ethics Pedagogy Fellowship for the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 academic years. She also served as Development Editor on the board of the Harvard Educational Review. 

Prior to her doctoral training, Maya worked at Northwestern University’s Children and Family Justice Center (CFJC), collaborating with attorneys, community groups, currently and formerly incarcerated people, and their families to end life sentences for youth in Illinois. Before joining the CFJC, Maya was the Assistant Director of The School for Ethics and Global Leadership in Washington, D.C., a semester program that aims to develop students into ethically strong, globally aware leaders. From 2011 to 2014, Maya served as the Executive Director of GlobeMed, a global network of undergraduate students and community organizations working to tackle challenges of poverty and health inequity. Maya holds a BA in English from Barnard College and an EdM from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.