S. Malcolm Gillis Distinguished Research Professor of Public Policy
Sanford School of Public Policy
Director, Center for Child and Family Policy
Duke University
Durham, North Carolina, United States
Jennifer E. Lansford, PhD, is the S. Malcolm Gillis Distinguished Research Professor of Public Policy at the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy and Director of the Center for Child and Family Policy, Durham, North Carolina, USA. She earned her doctorate in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan, USA. Her 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 behavior. She has consulted for UNICEF on the evaluation of parenting programs in several countries and on the development of a set of international standards for parenting programs. She is President of the Society for Research in Child Development and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Behavioral Development. She previously chaired the U.S. National Committee for Psychological Science of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development.
