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Dr. Gabriel Velez, Ph.D.

Dr. Gabriel Velez, Ph.D.Marquette University

Schroeder Complex, 116C

MilwaukeeWI53201United States of America414-288-4610gabriel.velez@marquette.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Assistant Professor, Educational Policy and Foundations Program Coordinator

Educational Policy and Leadership

Gabriel Velez is an assistant professor and developmental psychologist in the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership (EDPL) in the College of Education at Marquette University. Dr. Velez studies identity development in adolescents, particularly in relation to citizenship, human rights, and peace, including young people’s understandings and responses to peace education and restorative justice in educational contexts. His dissertation investigated how Colombian adolescents were making meaning of peace in relation to the peace process and themselves.

As a Marquette educator, Dr. Velez strives to bridge academia with the everyday lives and contexts of schools, students, teachers, administrators and families. To this end, he has collaborated with the Marquette Center for Peacemaking on evaluation of their Peace Works program, Ministry of Education in Colombia, with the Fundación para la Reconciliación and the Alianza Educativa in Bogotá, Colombia. Dr. Velez is also an active member of Division 48 (Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict and Violence) of the American Psychological Association, including participating in the Peace Education and Peace Identity working groups. He integrates this work into the classroom at Marquette by engaging students in questioning deterministic discourses on child and adolescence development as they explore the dynamic interplay between change and continuity as diverse individuals develop within a myriad of contexts.

Dr. Velez was awarded a Spencer Small Research Grant to study Black and Latino/a student perspectives and meaning making of restorative justice, and is a Co-Investigator on Dr. Holly Recchia’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant on children and adolescent perspectives on accountability for harm and restorative justice. He is also leading an interdisciplinary collaboration of colleagues across various institutions to study how experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic are intersecting with the transition to college for cohorts of young people, and recently completed a study on how middle or high school students processing the current moment of COVID-19 and integrating it into their developing senses of self.

His work can be found at marquette.academia.edu/GabrielVelez, and he can also be followed on Twitter at @GabrielMVelez or contacted via email.