Erica Sterling

Erica Sterling is a Rising Scholar Postdoctoral Fellow in the History Department. Her research focuses on the history of education law and policy, and twentieth-century U.S. urban and philanthropic history. Her book project tells an intellectual history of federal education politics from 1954 to 1994; she interrogates how federal bureaucrats and philanthropists, education researchers and practitioners theorized and developed non-judicial alternatives for large segregated school systems of the North and West untouched by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Erica holds her BA in History and Psychology from Emory University, and her PhD in History from Harvard University.

Erica is the Curator for Class Action, an exhibit opening at the DC History Center in the summer of 2025.