Brenda Wawire

Brenda is an Associate Research Scientist in the Education and Youth Empowerment Unit at APHRC. Her research interests include literacy acquisition across languages, second language acquisition, language of instruction policy, curriculum design, and reading teacher training and best practices for teaching multilingual learners. She is currently working on the COVID-19 Observatory in Education in Africa project.

She holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Foreign and Second Language Education from Florida State University, an M.A. in Modern Languages with a specialization in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from the University of Mississippi, and a Bachelor of Education Arts (English and Literature) from Kenyatta University.

Prior to joining APHRC, Brenda was an Assistant Teaching Professor and the Coordinator of African and African Diasporic Languages at the University of Kansas. She has also held teaching positions at the Jackson State University, University of Mississippi, University of Florida, and Florida State University.

She is passionate about generating high-quality research evidence that will have policy implications on language and literacy development among multilingual learners.