Emmy Reilly
Research Scientist
Overview
Emmy Reilly (she/her/hers) is a Research Scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy on the Durham Navigation Study with Dr. Ken Dodge. She is also working on a study examining the effect of the war on young people’s stress in Ukraine. Dr. Reilly earned her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development, where she worked with Dr. Megan Gunnar and collaborated with Dr. Phil Fisher at Stanford University. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a Research Coordinator at Boston Children’s Hospital with Dr. Charles Nelson. She received her B.S. in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she completed her honors thesis with Drs. Jennifer McDermott and Maureen Perry-Jenkins.
Dr. Reilly is a developmental psychobiologist whose program of research aims to determine the key parent capacities for responsive parenting in parents of the youngest children and the consequences for child development. Her research considers the impact of family resources (e.g., social support, income, wealth) and systems of oppression (e.g., racism, classism, cisheterosexism) on parents and tests how policies and programs reduce burdens on parents and support child development. She combines developmental, psychobiological, and prevention science approaches to study families with young children at the levels of behavior, cognition, emotion, and physiology. Currently, she is examining compassion (i.e., compassion for others, from others, self-compassion) and the regulation of stress physiology as two potential key factors for responsive parenting.
Dr. Reilly has taught five semesters of undergraduate courses, including Introduction to Child Development and Adolescent Psychology at the University of Minnesota. She has also given guest lectures on LGBTQIA2S+ families and youth in child policy courses. She is honored to have mentored 14 student researchers, including serving as a mentor for the TRIO McNair Scholars, Multicultural Summer Research Opportunity, and Next Generation Psychology Scholars programs for students from backgrounds systematically excluded from science. In her service work, she currently serves on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committee of the Duke Postdoctoral Association and on the advocacy committee of Developmental Scientists for Climate Action.