Zoe Silverman is a doctoral candidate in Learning Sciences & Human Development at UC Berkeley. Her research engages video-based interaction analyses of talk, gaze, gesture, touch, space, and movement during facilitated education programs to illuminate how participants—both human and non-human—collaborate to do hands-on learning with objects in museums.
Zoe worked for more than a decade as an education specialist and program coordinator at a variety of arts and cultural institutions in Boston and Los Angeles. In previous lives, she was a high school social studies teacher and medieval historian.
At UC Berkeley, she is affiliated with the Blah Blah Lab (Laura Sterponi) and the Embodied Design Research Laboratory (Dor Abrahamson). In 2024-2025, she will be a UC Intercampus Exchange student at the UCLA Center for Language, Interaction, and Culture.
Through her museum education research and teaching practice, Zoe seeks to understand the porous boundaries between people and things.
Specializations and Interests
Museum Education; Material Culture Studies; Video-Based Interaction Analysis; Embodied Cognition; Sensory Studies
