Ansley T. Erickson is a historian who focuses on educational inequality and United States urban and metropolitan history. Associate Professor of History and Education Policy at Teachers College and co-director of the Teachers College Center on History and Education, Erickson also holds affiliate faculty positions at Columbia’s Department of History and the Gordon Institute for Urban and Minority Education. Her first book, Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits (University of Chicago Press, 2016) tells the story of persistent inequality in Nashville during periods of segregation and desegregation and won the History of Education Society Outstanding Book Prize. Her writing has appeared in the American Journal of Education, History of Education Quarterly, Journal of Urban History, and Teachers College Record, as well as in Dissent, Washington Post, Chalkbeat, and more. She was previously a Scholar in Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library.
Erickson co-leads the Harlem Education History Project, a collaborative project that published Educating Harlem: A Century of Schooling and Resistance in a Black Community and an online open-access digital edition in 2019. The project also includes a collaborations with teachers and students in local classrooms and a summer institute for teachers in partnership with the New York Public Library. Earlier in her career, Erickson taught history in two New York City public high schools. For the last decade, Ansley has served as academic advisor for numerous Spencer Education Journalism Fellows.