Dr. Erin K. Gill is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. Her research examines how geography and public policy shape K–12 students’ educational opportunity, with particular attention to LGBTQ+ and rural student well-being. She leverages large-scale survey data and rigorous quantitative methods to examine how state and local contexts structure educational opportunity.

Her research is informed by her experiences as a teacher and teacher leader in a rural, Indiana high school. She contributes to research–practice partnerships with school districts, community organizations, and state agencies by co-authoring policy briefs and research reports to inform educational leadership and policy. This work has been recognized with an Outstanding Educational Policy Report Award from the American Educational Research Association’s Educational Policy and Politics Division.

Her scholarship has appeared in JAMA Pediatrics, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, and the Journal of School Leadership, and is under review at JAMA Pediatrics, Educational Researcher, and AERA Open. Dr. Gill's dissertation was recognized with a 2026 Dissertation of the Year award from the American Educational Research Association's Rural Education special interest group. Her doctoral research was supported by an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Predoctoral Training Program Fellowship and the Kaplan Dissertation Fellowship in LGBTQ+ Studies from the Center for Research on Gender and Women at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Gill is leading a Spencer Foundation-funded quasi-experimental study examining how LGBTQ+-restrictive state legislation shapes student well-being, informing debates about student civil rights and educational equity. 

As a postdoctoral researcher, she contributes to a study on absenteeism rates and reasons across school locales, revealing how geographic context shapes patterns of student attendance.

• Ph.D. (Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis) University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2025

• M.S. (Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis) University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2021

• B.S. (Visual Arts Education) Indiana University-Bloomington, 2014