People

Co-Founder, Retired

Dr. Diana Hess is dean emerita of the UW-Madison School of Education and an elected member of the National Academy of Education. Hess was the co-founder and Principal Investigator of The Discussion Project. Previously, Hess served as the dean of the UW-Madison School of Education from 2015-2024 and was a professor of social studies education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at UW-Madison from 1999-2025. Hess is a leading expert in civic education, discussion, and the teaching of controversial political, constitutional, and legal issues. She wrote “Controversy in the Classroom: The Democratic Power of Discussion,” which won the Exemplary Research Award from the National Council for Social Studies in 2009 and “The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education” co-authored with Paula McAvoy, which won the American Educational Research Association’s Outstanding Book Award in 2016 and the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in 2017. Retired from the UW-Madison in September of 2025, Hess is currently writing a book with Lynn Glueck on The Discussion Project and Deliberation Dinners.

Interim Director of WCER, Curriculum Designer, Instructor

Mariana Castro is a Curriculum Designer & Instructor for the Discussion Project. Mariana Castro serves as the interim Director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research and as a Qualitative Research Director for the Multilingual Learning Research Center. She is also affiliate faculty in the Education Policy Studies Department. She brings more than 35 years of experience in education as a former science teacher, a language specialist and a bilingual educator. Throughout her career, she has engaged in curriculum and instruction, teacher preparation and professional learning in the areas of science, language development and bilingual education. In her research, Mariana integrates her background as an educator, her passion for working with multilingual children, youth and their teachers, and her commitment for social justice. Over the last 14 years, her work has also involved policy work related to the education of multilingual learners, including the development of language proficiency standards in Spanish and English. Mariana has a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a M.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. She currently serves as the principal investigator for research related to the integration of language with core teaching practices, curriculum and instruction in dual language immersion programs, and preparing future and current teachers to help multilingual students.

Katherine (Kathy) Cramer is the Virginia Sapiro Professor of Political Science and Vilas Research Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She joined the UW-Madison faculty in 2000, and has been a proud member of that campus community, her undergraduate alma mater, ever since. She is known for her innovative approach to the study of public opinion, in which she uses methods such as inviting herself into the conversations of groups of people to listen to the way they understand their connections to politics and government, and to each other. She is the author or co-author of six books including the 2026 book with Larry Bartels, The Politics of Social Change: From the Sixties to the Present Through the Eyes of a Generation, and the 2016 book, The Politics of Resentment, which brought to light rural resentment toward cities and its implications for contemporary politics. She is also known as a scholar who actively puts her knowledge into action. She recently co-chaired the American Academy of Arts and Science Commission on Reimagining Our Economy (CORE), and has worked with the Center for Constructive Communication at MIT, and the affiliated nonprofit Cortico, since 2017 to create a platform and approach that aims to improve public understanding and policy making. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters. 

Amber Wichowsky is an Associate Professor of Public Affairs and holds the Leadership Wisconsin Endowed Chair for the Division of Extension. Her research explores how individuals and communities engage contentious and complex public issues and the social and institutional contexts that shape their civic engagement. She is the co-author of The Economic Other: Inequality in the American Political Imagination, which received the Juliette and Alexander L. George Outstanding Political Psychology Book Award from the International Society of Political Psychology in 2021. Her research has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Behavior, Urban Affairs Review, and Public Administration Review. Professor Wichowsky currently serves on the editorial board of the American Political Science Review, on the advisory board of American Political Science Association’s Institute for Civically Engaged Research (ICER), and on the academic advisory board for CivicPulse. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and was a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University’s Center for the Study of American Politics. She previously worked at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget in Washington, D.C.