Dr. Caroline Heller is Professor Emerita at Lesley University. Previously, she taught in the PhD in Educational Studies programs in the Graduate School of Education. In her research courses, she brought her background as an urban educator, qualitative researcher of out-of-school literacy settings, writer for the Teaching Tolerance Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and archival researcher for her study of central Europe before the war.
Her interest in helping qualitative researchers write well about their areas of study led her and nine of her doctoral students to write a book describing this endeavor, Meaning is the Fruit of This Intimacy: Narrative Writing for Doctoral Students and Qualitative Researchers, to be published by Teachers College Press in early 2023.
Caroline’s memoir, Reading Claudius: A Memoir in Two Parts, was published by Dial Press, Penguin Random House in 2015, and was re-issued as a paperback by Leapfrog Press. It looks at Central Europe before, during, and after World War II through the lens of her own family, particularly her father, Paul, who was imprisoned in Buchenwald for six years. The memoir is based on historical research, letters, interviews, and extensive travel. The book was reviewed favorably in the New York Times Sunday Book Review.