Mardi Schmeichel
Associate Professor
Department of Teaching, Learning & Teacher Education University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Contact
- Address
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CPEH 178
Lincoln, NE 68588-0233 - Phone
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402-472-2231 On-campus 2-2231
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mardi@unl.edu
Dr. Schmeichel leads the secondary social studies program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She teaches courses for social studies education majors and advises master's and doctoral students in curriculum and instruction. Her work sits at the intersection of cultural analysis, feminist theory, and education, with a particular interest in the politics embedded in everyday life.
Her research draws on poststructural discourse theory to examine how ideology shapes educational practice and teacher professional life. A central concern running through this work is what it means to prepare teachers and students for democratic life under pressure, including how educators develop strategies to address misinformation, conspiracy theories, and the conditions that make democracy fragile.
A related line of inquiry investigates how aesthetic practices and digital media shape ideological identity among young people, and, in particular, how seemingly ordinary choices about belonging and self-presentation become sites where political subjectivities form. This work is informed by feminist cultural theory and attentive to how gender and power circulate through institutions, policies, and everyday life.
Across these projects, her scholarship asks what people can do in a moment when democratic participation itself is contested and what it means to work toward it anyway.
Education
- Ph D, University of Georgia, 2012
- MEd, University of Georgia, 2009
- BA, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1992