About the Faculty

Faculty in the Department of Human Development & Family Studies (HDFS) bring a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary training to their shared enterprise, including developmental, social, counseling, and clinical psychology; sociology; anthropology; human development; family studies; history; and public policy. Despite this divesity, the faculty share a common interest in understanding how families work, how individuals develop within them, and how families relate to other features of society such as government and the legal system, schools, economic structure, social services, historical change, cultural systems, and health care.

A distinctive characteristic of the Department, is the creative collaborations fostered by its interdisciplinary nature. For example, the Family Violence Initiative (FVI) is a working group formed in 1997 by several faculty concerned with the causes, effects, and treatment of family violence. The FVI now includes eight collaborating faculty with backgrounds in clinical, counseling, and developmental psychology, marriage and family therapy, history, anthropology, and family studies. They have organized academic and professional symposia and stimulated innovative research into this pervasive and often hidden problem.

In such areas as early childhood education, parenting, work and family, sexuality, the elderly, and cultural issues, faculty at HDFS address issues of central importance to the families in Connecticut and around the world, and they bring to these issues a breadth of skills, experience, and collaboration unparalleled in more traditional academic units.

To find out more about individual faculty members visit the faculty listing.