School of Arts and Sciences
Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study & Human Development

Faculty

Faculty

Core Faculty

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Tama Leventhal

Professor and Department Chair of Child Study & Human Development
Neighborhood and community context; housing context; family context; poverty and socioeconomic status; social policy; adolescence; immigrant young children
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Roya Abbasi-Asl

Research Assistant Professor
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Emma Armstrong-Carter

Assistant Professor
child development; research practice partnerships; prosocial development; children's caregiving for family; school policies educational success
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Mary Buckingham

Research Assistant Professor
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Kathleen Camara

Research Associate Professor
Arts, music and drama education and its impact on youth development in formal and informal settings; the development of arts programming to support positive development, cultural identity and resilience among youths in underserved communities; arts and social justice; family influences on children's learning and social development; quantitative and qualitative methods of research and mixed methods designs; program evaluation
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Mary Casey

Senior Lecturer
Parent-child relations
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Eileen Crehan

Assistant Professor
Neurodevelopmental disorders; autism spectrum disorder; sexuality education; social perception; eye tracking; dimensional measurement of psychological symptoms
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Julie Dobrow

Distinguished Senior Lecturer
Children and media; ethnicity/gender and media; adolescents and media use; women's history and biography I am currently working on a three-tiered interdisciplinary research project along with Chip Gidney, Mary Casey, and Cynthia Smith at Eliot-Pearson, as well as faculty in several other departments at Tufts. The first piece of this project is a long-running content analysis of children's animated programming. We are updating prior work we've done that investigates images of race, ethnicity and gender in children's animated programming using both content and sociolinguistic analysis. The second part of this research is an exploration of why stereotyping persists in children's media. We are examining this through intensive interviews with content creators, writers, directors, vocal casting directors, and actors. The third part of the project is empirical research we're conducting with children, to see how children make sense of gender, race, and ethnicity in the animated programs they see. My applied work includes doing many media literacy workshops for parents and for children and for children in a variety of settings, and consulting work with colleagues at GBH, one of the leading creators of children's educational media. I have written about children and media issues in a variety of academic and popular venues. My other research is historical in nature. I serve as co-PI, along with Jennifer Burton, of the Half the History Project at Tufts, which utilizes short-form biography, film, and podcast to tell the untold and under-told stories of women's lives. I've written one biography of the relatively unknown mother/daughter team who made Emily Dickinson into one of the most-known women anywhere in the world. After Emily: Two Remarkable Women and the Legacy of America's Greatest Poet was published by WW Norton in 2018. My next dual biography, Crossing Indian Country: From the Wounded Knee Massacre to the Unlikely Marriage of Ohíye'Sa, Charles Alexander Eastman, will be published by NYU Press in Fall 2025.
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Elizabeth Dowling

Research Professor
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Simone Dufresne

Lecturer
neurodivergence, autism, social development, experience of higher educations students, participatory research
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M. Ann Easterbrooks

Professor
Developmental risk and resilience; child maltreatment; parent-child emotional availability and attachment relationships; maternal depression; adolescent parenting; relational and contextual supports for thriving
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Rebecca Fauth

Research Associate Professor
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Calvin Gidney

Associate Professor
Linguistics; literacy, sociolinguistic development; dyslexia in African-American children; language of children's cartoons; children's name-calling
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Jessica Goldberg

Research Associate Professor
Child and family policy; program evaluation; home visiting and other family support programs
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Sara Johnson

Associate Professor
Adolescence and young adulthood; identity development; civic development and engagement; youth contribution; critical consciousness; quantitative methods (including mixture models such as latent class and latent profile analyses); positive youth development
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Jordan Jurinsky

Assistant Professor
recovery; addiction; substance use; adolescence and emerging adults; community engaged research; recovery high schools; health equity; social contexts
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Theo Klimstra

Senior Lecturer
Adolescence and young adulthood; identity development; personality development; narrative identity; quantitative methods (including structural equation models)
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Richard Lerner

Professor and Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science
The application of developmental science across the life span; developmental systems theory; personality and social development in adolescence; developmental methodology; programs and policies for children, youth, and families; university-community collaboration and outreach scholarship. Developmental Science
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Christine McWayne

Professor
Early childhood education, school success of young children at risk due to poverty, parenting and family-school partnerships in diverse ethnocultural communities, culturally inclusive STEM curriculum, community-based research collaborations.
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Jayanthi Mistry

Professor and Interim Associate Dean of Student Diversity, Inclusion, & Success in the Schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering
Theoretical perspectives on the integration of culture and human development; Narratives of identity and place in communities; Navigating multiple cultural worlds, with a focus on ethnic minority, immigrant, and under-represented communities; Interpretive and Narrative Analysis methods in the study of children and families.
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Kerri Modry-Mandell

Senior Lecturer
Pediatric psychology; Developmental Psychopathology; Family Functioning and Adaptation to Pediatric Chronic Illness; Children's Sibling Relationships; Psychological Consultation and Collaboration and Therapeutic Space Design; Grief Support; Pediatric Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Developmental Initiatives
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Ellen Pinderhughes

Professor
Families and children in challenging circumstances; parenting and family functioning among diverse families; ethnic-racial socialization processes; cultural and contextual influences; child and youth outcomes; adoption and foster care
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Martha Pott

Distinguished Senior Lecturer
Personal and social development; biological & evolutionary roots of human development Biological and evolutionary substrates of human development; the role of eye-contact in social development.
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Fernando Salinas-Quiroz

Assistant Professor
So, as a scholar diving into Child Study and Human Development, I've got a fun mix of psychology, education, and Transgender studies in my toolkit. My research focuses on how kids and teens navigate their social lives, especially those who shake things up regarding gender and family norms. I'm super interested in how young people challenge the old-school gender binary and what that means for their lives, education, and well-being. And seriously, if you haven't checked out Christopher Goodey's book, "Development: The History of a Psychological Concept", you're missing out! Here's a juicy tidbit: he argues that we should consider the idea that humans—yes, even the little ones—don't just develop; they change! And there's no reason to box that change into the old-school 'development' box (Goodey, 2021, p. 4). Basically, he's saying that development is just one way of looking at change, and it's stuck in a specific time frame. This whole 'development' idea often paints people as locked into a rigid path, aiming for stability and constancy—especially regarding gender. Lately, I've been all about being true to myself and my intersecting identities, so I'm stepping away from the term 'development' to embrace the complexity of change instead. In a climate where Trans people—especially Trans youth—are targets of political campaigns and media debates about our right to exist (Daniels, 2022), my work alongside these young people has become more urgent than ever. Since 2020, a disturbing number of anti-Trans laws have been proposed and passed, primarily aimed at controlling Trans and Nonbinary (TNB) youth's bodies and limiting their lives. This climate of fear stifles the joy, imagination, and hope that every child deserves (TfS, n.d.). My research aims to confront these challenges head-on, co-creating and advocating with TNB youth to ensure their experiences are recognized and celebrated. I strive to Trans-form our understanding of childhood, parenting, and educational environments to make them inclusive and supportive of all gender identities and expressions, regardless of institutional legibility. By employing innovative approaches (like Youth Participatory Action Research) and methodologies (such as Reflexive Thematic Analysis, RTA), I aim to expand existing developmental theories to better account for the experiences and changes of TNB youth. This approach not only advances our academic understanding but also has practical applications for creating more inclusive policies and practices in schools and families. Our groundbreaking series of articles are the first of their kind globally: 1. We established minimum criteria for nonbinary gender identification in young children (Salinas-Quiroz & Sweder, 2023). 2. We explored how nonbinary children, ages three to eight, perceive and understand their gender identity (Salinas-Quiroz et al., 2024). 3. We investigated how parents learn to support their nonbinary children, examining their emotional processes and the Trans-formative nature of this journey (Sweder, Garcia, & Salinas-Quiroz, 2024). These studies utilized RTA within a framework of ontological relativism and epistemological constructivism—an innovative approach, especially within the traditionally quantitative realms of child studies and human developmental. I am committed to fostering collaboration across disciplines, viewing my research as an 'intellectual trading zone' (Billard et al., 2022) where insights from child studies, psychology, education, and Trans studies can generate new understandings of human growth. This applied Trans-disciplinary approach allows me to address complex questions about identity formation, social relationships, and supportive environments for children and youth of all genders. To tackle the urgent issues facing TNB youth, I've initiated a YPAR program with Trans Formative Schools in New York City. This project, co-designed by TNB students, seeks to revolutionize educational practices by centering Trans joy and social justice. In collaboration with Mocha Celis, the first Popular Transgender High School in the world, located in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I've extended my work to examine the educational experiences of Trans students in Latin America, where the struggles for basic rights are compounded by ongoing colonial and racial violence. Ultimately, my goal is to contribute to a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of child and youth growth—one that recognizes and celebrates all gender modalities (Ashley, 2022). Through my teaching and research, I aim to prepare future professionals in Child Study and Human Development to create more affirming and equitable spaces for all children and youth. In doing so, I hope to foster a world where the joy, imagination, and hope of every child, regardless of their gender identity, can flourish.
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W. George Scarlett

Distinguished Senior Lecturer
Children's development as earth stewards, children's play, Approaches to children's challenging behaviors, religious and spiritual development across the lifespan, the arts in support of children's development.
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Jonathan Tirrell

Research Associate Professor
I am a developmental scientist and Research Associate Professor at Tufts University in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development. With the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development (IARYD), I study positive youth development (PYD), seeking to understand what goes "right" in the lives of youth, by engaging in researcher-practitioner partnerships with youth-serving organizations around the world (currently Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, and El Salvador). My research is broadly focused on character development--I am interested in how people become good people. With a focus on person-context relations across development, I also explore how good people shape, and are shaped by, communities and cultures. Specifically, my work has focused on the potential role of forgiveness as a character strength and civic virtue. This interest has steered me toward working with individuals and organizations interested in peacebuilding and restorative justice, for instance, in Rwanda as well as the Boston area. Lessons learned from this work are timely and important for civil society and human flourishing, perhaps especially in an era of increasingly polarized social and political climates. Forgiveness, restorative justice, and peacebuilding seem to be linked by common threads of empathy, curiosity, generosity, listening, and dialogue, as well as critical thinking, personal responsibility, community action, and civic engagement. Please find my CV in LinkedIn for more information on my professional experiences, research grants, editorial and consulting activities, teaching experience, and publications.

Affiliate Faculty

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Renata Celichowska

Senior Lecturer
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Lisa Fiore

Program Director, Post-Bac Programs
Dr. Fiore's current research emphasizes social-emotional learning and development, building and sustaining relationships in educational settings, and promoting strengths-based environments and awareness of the multi-generational effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).
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Diane Ryan

Associate Dean for Programs and Administration

Part-time Faculty

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Jessica Bartlett

Lecturer
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Mariah Contreras

Lecturer
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Virginia Diez

Lecturer
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Leandra Elion

Lecturer
Children with special needs
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Crystal Eusebio

Lecturer
American Sign Language
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Shelley Isaacson

Lecturer
Children's Literature
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James Lipsky

Lecturer
American Sign Language; deaf studies
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Melinda Macht-Greenberg

Lecturer
Assessment
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Jennifer O'brien

Lecturer
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Karen O'hicks

Lecturer
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Karen Shmukler

Lecturer
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Cynthia Smith

Lecturer
Child art; art therapy; curriculum development; teacher education; community arts; children/young adult literature; interdisciplinary literacy

Emeriti Faculty

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David Elkind

Professor Emeritus
Cognitive development; perceptual development; Piaget
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Sylvia Feinburg

Professor Emerita
Teacher education; early childhood education; child art
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David Feldman

Professor Emeritus
Cognitive development; developmental theory; creativity; intellectual development; developmental transitions; expertise; extreme giftedness and creativity; educational and developmental theory.
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Francine Jacobs

Associate Professor Emerita
Child and family policy program evaluation
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Donald Wertlieb

Professor Emeritus
Clinical aspects of family and child development; pediatric and health psychology; stress and coping