Nancy Beadie is Professor and Chair of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in the College of Education at the University of Washington. Beadie's research focuses on historical relationships among education, economics, and state formation at local, state, national, and international levels.  Her current book project, Paramount Duty of the State: Education and State Formation in the U.S., 1846-1912, analyzes the significance of education in federal policy and the process of state (re)formation during the rise of the US as a global economic and imperial power at the end of the 19th century.  Previous publications include Education and the Creation of Capital in the Early American Republic (Cambridge University Press, 2010), which won the Outstanding Book Award from the History of Education Society and Chartered Schools: Two Hundred Years of Independent Academies in the United States, 1727-1925 (NY: Routledge Press, 2002), co-edited with Kim Tolley, as well as a numerous articles in US and international journals.   In addition to the politics and economics of education, Dr. Beadie has written extensively on the history of women in education. This work includes two articles for which she received the prize for Best Article Published in a Refereed Journal awarded by the History of Education Society. Other publications include an essay on the rise of national educational systems in North America, for the Oxford Handbook on the History of Education, edited by John Rury and Eileen Tamura, scheduled for 2019 and another on federal education policy and the rise of social science research published in the Centennial Anniversary Volume of the Review of Research on Education, 2016. Dr. Beadie is currently senior editor of History of Education Quarterly.  She has also served as President of the History of Education Society (U.S.) and as Vice-President of the American Educational Research Association for Division F (History and Historiography).

Dr. Beadie teaches courses on the history of education and education reform in the United States, the history of urban education, education as the transfer of culture, historical research methods in education, and the social history of gender in education.  In addition to serving as Senior Editor of History of Education Quarterly (U.S.), she is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for History of Education Review (Australia).  She has served as President of the History of Education Society (U.S.) and as Vice-President of the American Educational Research Association for Division F (History and Historiography).