Michael McCarthy

Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Student Development in the College of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Head of Disability Research, Creative Innovation, and Public Impact at the Education Collaboratory. His work combines rigorous research, creative methods, artificial intelligence, and public scholarship and tools to transform how disability is understood, measured, represented, and addressed across educational research and practice, public policy, and family life. He completed his postdoctoral training at the Yale Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine, where he developed innovative research tools and policy-focused scholarship advancing disability inclusion and accountability.

Dr. McCarthy’s scholarship is grounded in both academic inquiry and lived experience. As the brother of a woman with intellectual disabilities, he has long understood disability as a family, educational, social, and policy issue, not simply a diagnostic category. This experience has shaped his commitment to the dignity and inclusion of people with disabilities and to the perspectives of families and siblings, whose emotional lives and relationships are often overlooked.

His doctoral dissertation at the University of Rochester examined emotional functioning and emotional intelligence among young siblings of individuals with intellectual disabilities. Using a mixed methods and family-systems approach, the study measured and explored how siblings understood and managed emotions across family relationships. Rather than framing disability primarily as a source of family stress, the research documented siblings’ emotional strengths, relational knowledge, and complex understanding of family life and relationships.

A central focus of Dr. McCarthy’s current work is using artificial intelligence to advance disability inclusion, accountability, and public impact. He developed HOME | Disabilitydiscourse , a public research initiative and data platform that collects, verifies, scores, and visualizes statements about disability made by political leaders. The project provides accessible evidence for researchers, advocates, journalists, policymakers, and members of the public seeking to understand how political language shapes attitudes, policy priorities, and the treatment of people with disabilities.

He also developed EquiFrame, an AI-enabled platform that evaluates how disability is represented in educational measurement instruments. EquiFrame identifies disability-related content, examines deficit, neutral, and strengths-based framing, flags problematic terminology, and assesses whether measures locate problems within students rather than educational systems. The platform demonstrates how AI can be intentionally designed to support more valid, inclusive, and rights-affirming research.

Dr. McCarthy also co-leads the Education Collaboratory’s National Advisory Board, which brings together high school students with learning differences and peers without identified learning differences as partners in research. Grounded in youth participatory action research, the board helps shape the Collaboratory’s research agenda, advises researchers on inclusive language and practice, and co-develops resources intended to make education research more responsive to students’ lived experiences. Through this work, Dr. McCarthy advances a model of disability research in which young people are not only participants but also advisors, designers, and co-authors.

His broader scholarship examines the representation of students with disabilities in social and emotional learning research, the measurement of inclusive educational practices, and the translation of research into policy and practice. His publications have appeared in AERA Open, Child Development, Review of Educational Research, Remedial and Special Education, and Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy. He also shares his work with broader audiences through poetry, art, op-eds, books, and book chapters.

Dr. McCarthy earned his Ph.D. in Education from the University of Rochester’s Warner School of Education and Human Development, where he was named a William F. and Margaret W. Scandling Scholar. He also holds an M.A. in Global Development and Peace from the University of Bridgeport and a B.A. in History, with a minor in Human Rights, from the University of Connecticut.