Stephanie Almeida Nevin is the Executive Director of the Yale Center for Civic Thought and a Lecturer in Humanities, where she works to encourage thoughtful public discourse and civically responsible intellectual life in a rising generation of students, faculty, citizens, and leaders.
As co-founder of Yale’s Citizens Thinkers Writers program for students from New Haven public schools, Almeida Nevin played a pivotal role in the program’s design, implementation, and expansion into a nationally recognized initiative in civic thought and humanistic education. Since its founding in 2016, she has overseen every aspect of its programming, community partnerships, and strategic growth. She has also co-led the development of programming and resources for similar programs across the country.
Almeida Nevin serves on the Leadership Council of the national Knowledge for Freedom Network and was responsible for designing and hosting its inaugural Faculty Institute at Yale in January 2024. She was invited to present at the 2024 National Summit on Civic Education in Philadelphia, serves as a charter member of the Alliance for Civics in the Academy, and participates in the National Civic Collaboratory, a network of civic leaders and educators dedicated to strengthening democracy through trust-based collaboration.
At Yale, Almeida Nevin teaches courses in political theory and in the Directed Studies program. Her research explores how philosophers have theorized the relationship between politics and education from antiquity to the present day. Her dissertation, “The Spirit of Education: Politics and Pedagogy in Plato, Rousseau, Dewey, and Freire,” was awarded Departmental Distinction at Yale, and her research on Rousseau earned the 2022 Robert C. Wood Prize from the New England Political Science Association.
Before earning her doctorate in political science, Almeida Nevin worked in several roles to expand access to higher education. She holds a B.A. in politics and English from Pomona College and was a Fulbright Fellow at The University of Lisbon in Portugal.