Sara Harkness

Sara Harkness is Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Health and Human Development at the University of Connecticut, Storrs.  She received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at Harvard University, where she also earned a Master of Public Health degree and was an NIH post-doctoral fellow in psychology.  Her research focuses on the cultural construction of parenting and children=s development, especially as it affects health and well-being over the lifecourse.  In collaboration with Charles Super, she is the author of two theoretical constructs - the developmental niche and parental ethnotheories - which have been widely used for the study of parenting and child development in cultural context.  She is principal investigator of The International Study of Parents, Children, and Schools, an international collaborative project (funded in part by the Spencer Foundation) involving researchers in Sweden, Poland, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Australia, and the U.S.; and a co-principal investigator in The International Baby Study, a collaborative project (funded in part by the NIH) in the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Korea, and the U.S.  Both use mixed methods in order to learn about the ways that children=s learning, self-regulation and arousal are culturally channeled through parenting beliefs and practices.  She is also the director of GEAR UP Alliance for Success, an intervention project for youth, teachers and families in Hartford.
Dr. Harkness was Editor of the journal Ethos (the journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology) from 2000-2005 and is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Behavioral Development.  She has served on the grant review committee of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau as well as several NIH and NSF review panels and advisory boards.

Selected Publications

Harkness, S., & Super, C. M.. Eds.  (1996)  Parents= Cultural Belief Systems: Their Origins, Expressions and Consequences.  New York: Guilford Publications.

Harkness, S., Raeff, C., & Super, C. M., Eds.  (2000). Variability in the Social Construction of the Child.  New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, No. 87.