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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Mary Casey

Associate Teaching Professor
Parent-child relations
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Julie Dobrow

Teaching Professor
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, Love and Loss After Wounded Knee: A Biography of an Extraordinary Interracial Marriage, 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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Rebecca Fauth

Research Associate Professor
Applied research and evaluation; programs for children, youth, and families; community context; poverty and socioeconomic status; social policy
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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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Demond Hill

Assistant Professor
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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

Associate Teaching Professor
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

Associate Teaching Professor
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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Fernando Salinas-Quiroz

Assistant Professor
My research centers trans and nonbinary children and youth, focusing on how they imagine, inhabit, and transform gender, family, and belonging. I work alongside young people to challenge the rigid binaries that limit their lives, and I see research as a space for co-creation, joy, and justice. Through transdisciplinary approaches, I seek to expand our understanding of change—not as a fixed "path of development," but as the complex, shifting, and plural ways children and communities grow. At the core, my scholarship asks how we can build worlds where trans and queer youth not only exist, but thrive.
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W. George Scarlett

Teaching Professor
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.

Affiliate Faculty

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Renata Celichowska

Associate Teaching Professor
Somatic Movement Education Dance History, Aesthetics, and Cultural Studies Creative Process Dance Education (for all ages and stages) Dance and the Environment
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Eileen Crehan

Affiliate
Neurodevelopmental disorders; autism spectrum disorder; sexuality education; social perception; eye tracking; dimensional measurement of psychological symptoms
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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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Laurie Miller

Adjunct Professor
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Diane Ryan

Associate Professor

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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Kelly Fleese

Lecturer
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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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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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Kathleen Camara

Associate Professor Emerita
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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M. Ann Easterbrooks

Professor Emerita
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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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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Martha Pott

Teaching Professor Emerita
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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Donald Wertlieb

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