Tama Leventhal

Tama Leventhal

(617) 627-3455
105 College Avenue
Research/Areas of Interest:

Neighborhood and community context; housing context; family context; poverty and socioeconomic status; social policy; adolescence; immigrant young children

Education

  • PhD, Developmental Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University, United States, 1999
  • BA, Psychology, Colgate University, United States, 1991

Biography

My research is at the intersection of child development and social policy. My primary line of research focuses on the role of neighborhood contexts in the lives of children, youth, and families; related work centers housing. In this work, I examine whether the neighborhoods where children and youth live matter for their development, for whom they matter most, when they matter most for child development, and how they might matter. Another related line of research, addressing similar issues, centers on housing and residential mobility.

I am currently Co-Director of the Housing and Children's Healthy Development Study, a combined experimental and non-experimental study, which grew out of the MacArthur Network on Housing and Children's Development, which I also co-directed.

I was a Co-Investigator on many of the leading neighborhood studies and an Adolescence Investigator for Phase IV of the NICHD Study of Child Care and Youth Development. I was formerly a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Postdoctoral Urban Scholar, a William T. Grant Scholar, and a Foundation for Child Development Changing Faces of America's Children Young Scholar.

Other professional activities include Associate Editor of the Journal of Research on Adolescence and Applied Developmental Science, Chair of the Steering Committee of the University-Based Child and Family Policy Consortium, and Board Member of the Council on Contemporary Families.