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My scholarship lies at the intersections of literacy, language, and teacher education; refugee education and homeland knowledges; community-engaged and humanizing education; and justice, healing, and liberatory education. Across these interconnected strands, literacy education serves as the central disciplinary lens through which I examine how knowledge, language, and lived experiences shape curriculum, pedagogy, teacher professional learning, and more humanizing educational practices. My research is particularly concerned with how children, youth, families, educators, and communities, especially those with refugee backgrounds, produce, sustain, and carry knowledge across homes, schools, languages, communities, and borders.

Since joining the Department of Education and Wellness in 2022, I have founded Welcome New Neighbor, a collaboration between the Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education and community partners supporting the resettlement and well-being of people with refugee backgrounds in Burlington and surrounding communities. Through home- and community-based initiatives, Welcome New Neighbor connects teacher candidates with translingual children, youth, and families, creating opportunities for reciprocal learning grounded in families’ knowledge, languages, histories, and lived experiences. 

Grounded in critical, sociocultural, translanguaging, humanizing, and justice-oriented perspectives, as well as my lived experience as a person with a refugee background from Bosnia and Herzegovina, my scholarship and pedagogy challenge deficit narratives and recognize children, youth, families, communities, and educators as knowledge holders. My teaching across undergraduate and graduate education courses draws upon community-engaged and justice-oriented approaches that connect theory and practice, cultivate inquiry and critical reflection, and create opportunities for students to learn with and from communities. These commitments also inform my attention to joy, belonging, engagement, and the emotional and identity-affirming well-being of children, youth, and families.

Across my research, teaching, mentorship, and community engagement, I seek to advance critical and humanizing approaches that honor the dignity, agency, knowledge, and lived experiences of children, youth, families, and educators. I am committed to preparing teacher candidates and M.Ed. candidates to engage in liberatory praxis, act in solidarity with marginalized communities, embody critical humility, and cultivate justice- and equity-centered practices grounded in care and ethical responsiveness.

Outside of work, I live to travel, and my happy places are Lanikai Beach and the North Shore of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i.