Kris Gutiérrez

Kris D. Gutiérrez is the Carol Liu Chair and Distinguished Professor and former Associate Dean at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Education and the university’s Faculty Assistant to the Vice Chancellor for Research. Kris’s expertise is in the learning sciences, literacy, policy, and qualitative and design-based approaches to inquiry. Her research examines learning in designed environments, with attention to culture, historicity, and ecological resilience, and approaches to literacy and STEM learning with immigrant and translingual student populations. Her work in social design–based experiments foregrounds issues of equity in learning and design. Kris’s research has been published widely and she has received numerous awards including the 2025 AERA Distinguished Contributions to Research award. She served on the US Department of Education Reading First Advisory Committee, was a member of President Obama’s Education Policy Transition Team, and served as member and Vice-Chair of the National Board for Education Sciences/IES.