Research Fellowships and Independent Study

Dr. Kenneth Dodge is the William McDougall Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. He is also a faculty fellow at the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy, which he founded in 1999. Dodge would like to work with a student who has ambitions to complete an honors thesis. Possible topics include prevention of child abuse and how chronic violence develops across the life span. He can provide access to several large, funded research studies that link social science to clinical practice and public policy.

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Dr. Lisa Gennetian is the Pritzker Professor of Early Learning Policy Studies at Duke University. She is an applied economist whose research straddles a variety of areas concerning child poverty from income security and stability to early care and education with a particular lens toward identifying causal mechanisms underlying how child poverty shapes children’s development. Dr. Gennetian is a co-PI on the first multi-site multi-year randomized control study of a monthly unconditional cash transfer to low income mothers of infants in the U.S. called Baby’s First Years. Her recent work bridges poverty scholarship with a behavioral economic framework.  “The Persistence of Poverty in the Context of Economic Instability: A Behavioral Perspective,” describes such a framework for poverty programs and policy, co-authored with Dr. Eldar Shafir and her co-authored publication “Behavioral Economics and Developmental Science,” further advances the application of behavioral economic insights to the arena of children’s development. Gennetian has since launched the beELL initiative; applying insights from behavioral economics to design strategies to support parent and family engagement in, and enhance the impacts of, existing childhood interventions. Dr. Gennetian also has a body of research examining poverty among Hispanic children and families, serving as a PI on several grants and a co-PI directing work on poverty and economic self-sufficiency at the National Center for Research on Hispanic Families.

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Dr. Ben Goodman is a research scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy. Trained as a developmental and prevention scientist, his work at the Center focuses on program evaluation, population approaches to promoting child and family health and well-being, and development of early childhood systems of care. His research also examines how sources of stress and support shape the quality of parent-child relationships, parents’ own well- being, and child development. Current research includes examining the implementation and impact of two universal interventions, Family Connects and Community Navigation, on population rates of child and family health and well-being.

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Dr. Tamar Kushnir is a Professor in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University, and the director of the Early Childhood Cognition Laboratory. Kushnir's research examines learning and conceptual change in young children with a focus on social learning and social cognition. Her work is motivated by a long-standing curiosity about the developing mind, and in particular by how children learn about themselves and others from actively exploring the world around them. Research topics include: mechanisms of causal learning, the developmental origins of our beliefs in free will and agency, cultural influences on early social and moral beliefs, normative reasoning, and epistemic trust, and the role of imagination in social cognition, motivation and decision making.

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Dr. Jennifer Lansford is the director of the Center for Child and Family Policy and research professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy. Dr. Lansford's research focuses on the development of aggression and other behavior problems in youth, with an emphasis on how family and peer contexts contribute to or protect against these outcomes. She examines how experiences with parents (e.g., physical abuse, discipline, divorce) and peers (e.g., rejection, friendships) affect the development of children's behavior problems, how influence operates in adolescent peer groups, and how cultural contexts moderate links between parenting and children's adjustment.

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Dr. Helen Milojevich is a research scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy. Dr. Milojevich is a developmental psychologist with a focus on program evaluation, quality improvement, and innovation of evidence-based interventions. She conducts research on the prevention of child maltreatment, as well as the impact of early adversity on children’s well-being and health.

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Dr. Emmy Reilly is a research scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy. Trained as a developmental psychologist, her work is focused on the interactions between compassion and self-compassion, parenting, and stress physiology. She conducts research primarily on infancy and toddlerhood and has expertise in measures of stress physiology (e.g., cortisol) and is interested in supporting parent wellbeing to benefit the development of the next generation of children. Currently, she is exploring the role of parent self-compassion in the implementation of the Community Navigation universal family intervention.

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Dr. Katie Rosanbalm is a research scholar with the Center for Child and Family Policy. Trained as a child clinical and quantitative psychologist, her work at the Center has focused on program evaluation in the areas of child maltreatment prevention, self-regulation development, and early childhood systems. Current research topics include: evaluation of a preschool social-emotional curriculum, coordination of child mental health and child welfare systems, and creation/evaluation of trauma-sensitive schools.

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Dr. Anna Rybińska  is a Research Scientist with the Center for Child and Family Policy.  Trained as a social demographer and family sociologist, she is interested in family formation patterns and the differentiation of family behaviors across social and regional contexts. In her work, she ask questions about who has children and how many, when individuals have children, and how these transitions impact the well-being of parents and their children. Her research has addressed the following topics: childbearing intentions and unintended pregnancy; timing of childbearing; pregnancy spacing; pro-natalist policy interventions; prevention of child maltreatment/neglect; the role of social policy in perpetuating income inequality and family inequality.

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Dr. Ann Skinner is a Research Scientist with the Center for Child and Family Policy and trained as a developmental psychologist. Most of her research includes partnerships with international colleagues to examine parent-child relationships, family functioning,  and the development of aggression, anxiety, and depression in youth. Much of her work has focused on the impact of community-wide stressors like political and community violence on family wellbeing. She is also currently involved with research examining young adult substance use and self-regulation, and several projects examining the impact of COVID-19 on families internationally.

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Dr. Liz Snyder, a research scientist with the Center for Child and Family Policy, is trained as an experimental psychologist, with a focus on cognitive development. Since joining the Center in 2006, her work has focused on program evaluation within the child welfare and mental health systems. Currently, she serves as the evaluation co-director for the SAMHSA child mental health initiative in Durham, North Carolina. This grant builds upon Durham’s System of Care by targeting transition-age youth (16-21) who are experiencing mental health challenges. Another project includes the evaluation of the East Durham Children’s Initiative (EDCI), which is modeled after the acclaimed Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), and seeks to provide a pipeline of services and supports that allows children to become high academic achievers and successfully complete college or vocational training. A third evaluation project includes the Book Babies Home Visiting program in Durham.