Erica R. Halverson is an Assistant Professor the Learning Sciences Area in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. She earned a Ph.D. from the Learning Sciences Department at Northwestern University in 2005. Her overarching research interest is the intersection of identity and learning; in particular, she sees the dramaturgical process — the telling, adapting, and performing of personal narrative — as a sophisticated set of literacy practices that lie at this intersection. She examines this process both from a literacy studies perspective and from a developmental psychological perspective, asking questions about the literacy and performance practices themselves and about what these practices afford participating youth in terms of their struggles with positive identity development. As a learning scientist and former non-profit Executive Director, she is also interested in how this knowledge can inform the design of future programs that purposefully engage youth in complex struggles of self- and community presentation through the performance of their life stories. Her research as a co-principal investigator on the MacArthur Foundation-sponsored grant, focuses primarily on the application of the dramaturgical process to the practice of filmmaking.