Liliane Nienstedt

Liliane (Lily) Nienstedt is a PhD candidate in Education Policy with a focus on mixed research methods. Lily spent five years teaching middle-school science at a public school in Louisville, KY, where she also trained new teachers through Teach Kentucky, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing teacher recruitment in her district. During her time in the classroom, she additionally served as department chair and team lead. She holds a B.A. in Chemistry from Williams College and an M.P.P. from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was awarded the Smolensky Prize for Best Master’s Thesis. At Berkeley, she worked as a research assistant for the California Policy Lab and the Berkeley People Lab.

Faculty Advisor: Dr Carolyn Heinrich

Research Interests

Lily’s research interests lie at the intersection of education, health and welfare policies. Her three paper dissertation uses longitudinal administrative data to investigate whether food insecurity influences student disciplinary outcomes, qualitative interviews to investigate the landscape of school based health care in rural schools, and mixed methods to investigate the associations between mental health diagnoses and chronic absenteeism. In addition to her dissertation work, Lily works as an RA for Professor Carolyn Heinrich, evaluating the provision of mental health resources in Tennessee schools.

Education

B.A. in Chemistry, Williams College

M.P.P., Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley