Cristina Viviana Groeger is a historian of education and work in the modern United States. Her research investigates the historical construction of work, schools, and labor markets. She examines how these institutions have produced a society marked by one of the highest levels of social inequality in the Global North. Her work illuminates the ways the past shapes contemporary social structures.
Education is thought to be the route out of poverty, but history disagrees. Cristina Groeger explores the Gilded Age origins of this idea and shows how schooling actually bolstered economic inequality in the 20th century. If we want a more equitable society, she argues, we should look not just to education, but also to workers and the workplace.