|
|
Thomas S. Weisner, PhD is Prof. of Anthropology, Departments of Psychiatry (NPI Semel Institute, Center for Culture and Health) and Anthropology at UCLA. His research and teaching interests are in culture and human development; medical, psychological and cultural studies of families and children at risk; mixed methods; and evidence-informed policy. He is director of the Fieldwork and Qualitative Data Laboratory in the Mental Retardation Research Center at UCLA. With Greg Duncan, Aletha Huston, Hiro Yoshikawa, and others, he is currently studying impacts on children and families of changes in welfare and family supports, based on a longitudinal study over 8 years of a successful random-assignment experimental support program for working-poor parents. He also directs a longitudinal study of families with children with development al disabilities, and is collaborating in a random-assignment, experimental mixed-method study of the impacts of early literacy interventions for Head Start programs (with Chris Lonigan and JoAnn Farver). He has done field research in Western Kenya on sibling caretaking of children, and on the long-term consequences of urban migration for children and families, as well as studies of sibling caretaking and school competence among Native Hawaiians (with Ronald Gallimore). Weisner has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a member of the MacArthur Foundation research network on successful pathways in middle childhood, is currently President of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, and is a Senior Program Advisor to the WT Grant Foundation. He is the co-author of Higher Ground: New Hope for the Working Poor and Their Children (2007) (with Greg Duncan and Aletha Huston); co-editor of Making it work: Low-wage employment, family life and child development (with Hiro Yoshikawa & Edward Lowe), (2006); editor of Discovering successful pathways in children's development: New methods in the study of childhood and family life (2005); and co-editor of African families and the crisis of social change (with Candice Bradley and Phil Kilbride) (1997). His B.A. in Anthropology is from Reed College (1965) and Ph.D. from Harvard University (1973). |
Home