Dr. Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg is the Newhouse Director of the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), a leading national research center on youth civic engagement based at Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life. She has led CIRCLE for the past decade, leading CIRCLE’s growth in impact by building a passionate and diverse team of staff who interact with civic life from both multi-disciplinary and intersectional lenses. Kei’s scholarship seeks to expand pathways to civic learning and engagement through partnership-based and field-building research initiatives as well as applied research-to-practice projects, such as CIRCLE’s partnership with the Illinois Civics Hub, and Educating for American Democracy, and Youth Leadership Learning Community. Kei’s approach to research design and orientation for partner-led impact is highly influenced by her academic background in Clinical and Community Psychology and Social-Emotional Learning.
Before joining CIRCLE, Kei worked with young people and families at a public high school, an emergency room, and a community health center as a clinical psychologist in training. Working with people who faced numerous structural challenges and struggled with mental, academic, and legal hurdles as a result made her want to explore work that sought to correct systems that created those challenges in the first place, which attracted her to CIRCLE.
As a leading voice in the youth civic engagement field, Kei is frequently featured in major outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, National Public Radio, C-SPAN, Channel 1, and NBC. Kei is a recipient of the Jobs for The Future Distinguished Fellowship for Student-Centered Learning (2016-2018), and serves as a board director at March For Our Lives and Rhizome, both of which are youth-founded and led civic organizations. She previously served on the board of Generation Citizen and Democracy Works. Most recently, she played a major role in development of the Our Common Purpose, a commission-report from the AAA&S, and the Educating for American Democracy initiative. She earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Loyola University, with an emphasis on positive youth development and community psychology.