Graduate Student Alumni
The Comparative Human Development graduate program prepares students for a full range of professional careers. The department produces graduates who take academic positions in a variety of departments, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of their human development training: departments of anthropology, biology, education, human development, policy, psychology, sociology, social work, and other related fields. Graduates have also taken postdoctoral or other fellowship programs as their first academic posts. Additionally, some of our graduates have taken full-time research or consulting positions in non-profit organizations, government agencies, and in the business sector. The following list demonstrates this diversity and covers the dissertation titles and current job placements of some of our alumni.
You may also view the complete list of past dissertations since 1989.
Sami Abuhamdeh
Visiting Assistant Professor, American University in Cairo
Dissertation: What Makes an Intrinsically Motivated Activity Intrinsically Motivated: The Role of Challenge
Karen Hunt Ahmed
DePaul University, College of Commerce
Dissertation: The "Business" of Culture: Morality and Practice in Islamic Finance
Website
Jacqueline Allen
Clinician
Dissertation: From "Stinkin" Thinkin'" to "Easy Does It": Narratives of Enculturation and Psychological Transformation in Alcoholics Anonymous
Michael Axelman
CARE Parenting & Child Counseling
Dissertation: The Rational Experiences of African-American Adolescents and the Role of Significant Adults: An Examination of Teenage Lives During the Transition to High School
Sue Bae
American School of Professional Psychology
Dissertation: The Experience of Professional Autonomy among Psychotherapists in Korea and the West
Research: Cross-cultural psychology, cultural diversity, and development of psychotherapists
Will Bennis
University of New York in Prague
Dissertation: Experience, Values, Beliefs, and the Sociocultural Context In Gambling Decision Making: A Field Study of Casino Blackjack
Research: Cultural and cognitive influences on subjective assessments of what is rational or objective, focusing on gamblers' beliefs about winning and how/why these beliefs differ across the two cultures and from normative models of optimal decision making.
Sam Bergmann
University of Texas at Austin, B.A. Humanities, Psychology
Research: GLBT development and families, the construction of self and identity, developmental psychopathology
Ronan Surtida Bernas
Eastern Illinois University, Department of Psychology
Dissertation: Choosing and Maintaining a Position on a Socio-moral Issue: An Argumentative Reasoning Approach
Matthew Bird
Universidad del Pacifico
Dissertation: The Other Paths: Cultural Economics, Comparative Economic Performance, and the Formation of Capitalist Mentalities in Lima Peru
Mark Blumberg
University of Iowa, Department of Psychology
Research: Interactions between sex and thermoregulation in the male rat
Lihanna Borhan
University of Malaya, Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling
Dissertation: Self-Image of Malaysian Adolescents
Lara Braff
Dissertation: Re/conceiving Personhood: The Localization of Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Mexico City
Research: Psychological and medical anthropology; science studies; biological and social reproduction; kinship theory; Mexico
Rachel S. Brezis
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture and Neuroscience, Foundation for Psychocultural Research, UCLA
Dissertation: Social and Non-Social Memory in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders
Research: Developmental psychology, autism, neuropsychology, cultural development, personal and social memory, religious development, neurobiological underpinnings of acculturation, Israel, India
Nicole Brodsky
Independent film producer for educational television
Dissertation: Art imitates life imitates art: Evolving themes in the lives and works of creative artists
Joseph Calabrese
University College London
Dissertation: Mirror of the Soul: Cultural Psychiatry, Moral Socialization and the Development of the Self in the Native American Church
Julia Cassaniti
Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University
Dissertation: Control in a world of change: Emotion and Morality in a Northern Thai town
In-Soo Choe
Sungkyunkwan University, Department of Psychology
Dissertation: Motivation, Subjective Experience, Family and Academic Achievement in Korean High School Students
Cindy Dell Clark
Penn State University, Human Development and Family Studies
Dissertation: The Cultural Psychology of Christmas and Easter-with Special Reference to Children
Research: Children, culture and the imagination
Suzanne Cox
Beloit College, Department of Psychology
Dissertation: Attachment in Preterm Infants and Their Mothers: Neonatal Risk Status and Maternal Representations
Research: Infant attachment; developmental psychology; women's studies
Bianca Dahl
Visiting Assistant Professor, Brown University
Dissertation: Left Behind: Orphaned Children and the Politics of Kinship, Culture, and Caregiving during Botswana's AIDS Crisis
Research: Sociocultural and medical anthropology; transnational development; orphaned children; the HIV/AIDS epidemic; kinship; social change; non-governmental organizations; Botswana
Elizabeth Davies
University of St. Francis
Dissertation: Retrospective Reevaluation of Personally Salient Events: A Longitudinal Study
Eric S. De Vos
Professor of Psychology, Saginaw Valley State University
Dissertation: Complications of Labor: Newborn Behavioral Correlates, and Prenatal Psychological Mediation
David Scott DeBoer
Associate Director of the Wellness Center, Loyola University Chicago
Dissertation: Vicissitudes of Hope in the Lazarus Effect: Psychological Responses of HIV-Positive Gay Men in the Post Era of HIV and AIDS
Research: Psychological responses of HIV-positive gay men in the post era of HIV and AIDS
Johanne Eliacin
Post-doctoral resident in Clinical Psychology at Cornell University
Dissertation: An Ethnographic Study of the "Epidemic" of Schizophrenia Among African-Caribbeans in England
Research: Clinical psychology; psychological and medical anthropology; Caribbean studies; African diaspora; gender; immigration studies
Richard Epstein
Department of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University
Dissertation: Beyond the Yellow Door: Outcome and Follow-Up Studies in a Residential Treatment Center
Brent Finger
Postdoctoral Associate, SUNY Buffalo
Dissertation: Exploring the Intergenerational Transmission of Attachment Disorganization
Research: Psychoanalytic theory; infant/child-parent attachment; developmental psychopathology; substance abuse; narrative psychology
Alan Fiske
UCLA, Department of Anthropology
Research: How culture, psychology, and natural selection operate together to shape human sociality
Guy Christopher Fricano
University of Chicago
Dissertation: Max Weber's theory of Charisma and the Catholic Charismatic Renewal: An examination of fit leading to a proposed complementariness with Mircea Eliade's Phenomenology of Religion
Research: Charisma and leadership; psychological anthropology of Catholicism; long-term adaptation to illness; health psychology
Heidi Fung
Academia Sinica, Taipei, Institute of Ethnology
Dissertation: The Socialization of Shame in Young Chinese Children
Research: Self construction through narrative practices
Holly Furdyna
UCLA's Center for Culture and Health
Dissertation: Parential Behavioral Control in Response to Neighborhood Adversity: Positive and Negative Effects on Adolescent Rick Behavior, Peer Relationships, and Emotional Wellbeing
Research: Ethnographic study of African-descended urban youth; culture and autonomy during the transition to adulthood
Susan Gans
West Chester University, Department of Psychology
Research: LH and lordosis: Sources of individual differences
Lawrence Gianinno
Child Development Department, Tufts University
Dissertation: Children's understandings of everyday economic practices
Christine L. Glover
McHenry County College
Dissertation: What Women Want: The Role of the Social Environment on Romantic Partner Preferences
Research: Effects of social support on women's partner preferences in romantic relationships, integrating evolutionary psychology and attachment theory with more traditional social psychological and sociological models of romantic relationship formation and maintenance
David Scott Gortner
Virginia Theological Seminary
Dissertation: Varieties of Young Adult Personal Theologies: Content, formative Influences, and Current Relationships to Everyday Life
Jim Goss
Dissertation: Speech-gesture Mismatches and Dynamic Coordination I Schizophrenia
Research: Psychopathology; psycholinguistics; psychiatric anthropology
Andrew Guest
University of Portland, Department of Psychology
Dissertation: Cultural processes of psychosocial competence and middle childhood: Play, self-esteem, and teamwork in two distinct impoverished communities
Research: Cultural psychology of doing good, particularly in relation to sport, the development enterprise, and education
Phil Hammack
University of California Santa Cruz, Department of Psychology
Dissertation: The Narrative Stalemate: Conflict, Identity and the Cultural Psychology of Israeli and Palestinian Adolescence
Research: Identity development during adolescence and emerging adulthood; cultural psychology of adolescence; sexual orientation, sexual identity, and life-course development; culture and identity formation in the context of ethnopolitical conflict, war, and terrorism; youth and coexistence education in Israel and the Palestinian territories
Andrew Harlem
California Institute of Integral Studies, Clinical Psychology Program
Dissertation: The Making of the 'Culturally Competent' Psychologist: A Study of Educational Discourse and Practice
Joel Hektner
North Dakota State University, Department of Child Development and Family Science
Dissertation: Exploring Optimal Personality Development: A longitudinal Study of Adolescents
Gretchen Hermes
Yale, Department of Psychiatry
Dissertation: The Embodiment of Social Isolation: Bio-Behavioral Systems, Pre-Disease Pathways, and Patterns of Aging
Research: Psychosocial contexts and health; religion and healing; psychoanalysis
Jacob R. Hickman
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Brigham Young University
Dissertation: Morality and Personhood in the Hmong Diaspora: A Person-Centered Ethnography of Migration and Resettlement
Research: Medical anthropology; cultural-psychological adaptations in refugee and immigrant communities; transnationalism, Hmong diaspora, ethnic identity, moral beliefs; hybridity and syncretism; Messianic religion and Revitalization movements; folk health beliefs; person-centered ethnography; Thailand and Southeast Asia
Christy Hoffman
Dissertation: Costs of reproduction among rhesus macaque females on Cayo Santiago
Research: Behavioral and hormonal aspects of aging in rhesus monkeys; comparative behavioral biology
Randall Horton
Department of Psychology, Seattle University, Department of Psychology
Dissertation: Refining Theory and Practice in the Cultural Psychology of Emotion: Tibetan Anger and the Roots of the Modern Tibetan Commitment to Non-Violence.
Jason Ingersoll
Dissertation: Depression, Subjectivity, and the Embodiment of Suffering in Urban Reform China
Research: Globalization; social change; psychiatric anthropology; China
Annette Iskra
Xavier University of Louisiana
Dissertation: Nobody Wins: Psychological Effects of War and Repatriation in Croatia
Lene Arnett Jensen
Clark University, Department of Psychology
Dissertation: Different Habits, Different Hearts: Orthodoxy and Progressivism in the United States and India
Eunsun Joo
Duksung Women's University in Seoul, Korea, Department of Psychology
Dissertation: The psychotherapeutic relationship in Korea: Cross-national and internal cultural comparison
Craig Joseph
Templeton Foundation
Dissertation: The Virtues as a Cultural Domain: a Study of Arabic-Speaking Muslims
Ernst Karel
Harvard University, Department of Anthropology, Film Study Center
Dissertation: Kerala Sound Electricals: Amplified sound and cultural meaning in South India
Leann Helka Kinnunen
Dissertation: Evidence Concerning the Etiology of Sexual Orientation in Human Males: Differential Effects of Fluoxetine on Cerebral Glucose Metabolism of Exclusively Homosexual and Exclusively Heterosexual Men
Michele Koven
University of Illinois, Department of Speech Communication
Dissertation: French-Portuguese Bilinguals' Enactments of Self In Two Languages
Hallie Kushner
Dissertation: Substance Users and the Psychiatric Role of the Emergency Department
Research: Ethics and clinical psychology; qualitative suicide assessment; confluence of mental health and hospital care
John Lucy
University of Chicago, Committee on Human Development
Research: Comparative and developmental perspectives on language and thought
Jocelyn Marrow
Postdoctoral Scholar Stanford University, Department of Anthropology
Dissertation: Psychiatry, Modernity and Family Values: Clenched Teeth Illness in North India
Research: India, family, emotion, distress, mental illness
Julie Mennella
Monell Chemical Senses Center
Research: Social control of infanticidal behavior in rats
Usha Menon
Drexel University, Department of Culture and Communications
Dissertation: Receiving and giving: Distributivity as the source of women's well being
Joan Miller
New School University, Department of Psychology
Research: Cultural influences on social cognition and social development
Judith Marsha Mintz
Dissertation: The Social Construction of Self-esteem: Narrative Discourse Practices among Parents and Preschool Children in a Middle-class European-American Community
Neely Anne Laurenzo Myers
Postdoctoral Fellow, Georgetown University
Dissertation: Culture of Recovery: Schizophrenia, the United states Mental Health Care System, and the American Ethos of the Self-Made Man
Research: Psychiatric/medical anthropology; social change; cultural components of recovery from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder; recovery models in the mental health system; alternative systems of mental health care
Olin E (Gene) Jr. Myers
Western Washington University, Department of Environmental Studies
Dissertation: Young Children's Sense of Connection to Animals: The Developmental Basis of an Ecological Self
Research: Conservation psychology; human development and non-human animals; environmental identity; environmental education
Jeanne Nakamura
Claremont Graduate University, Quality of Life Research Center
Dissertation: Sustaining Engagement: Continuity and Change into Later Life
Patrick Nicoletti
St. Joseph's College Connecticut, Department of Human Development and Family Studies
Dissertation: The impact of social status on preschoolers' display of direct and ritualized responses to peer conflict
Douglas Novotny
Clinician
Dissertation: The Interpersonal Significance of Conflicting Messages in Couple Communication: An Examination of Relational Patterns Among Adolescent African-American Expectant Parents in Chicago
Charles Nuckolls
University of Alabama, Department of Anthropology
Research: Psychology anthropology; a study of divination and concepts of suffering in a fishing village in India
Suzanne Pelka
UCLA Center for Society and Genetics. Postdoctoral Fellow.
Dissertation: Lesbian Couples Using In-Vitro Fertilization to Co-Mother: A Cultural Study of Biological Ties
Lara C. Perez-Felkner
Post-Doctoral Fellow at NORC at The University of Chicago
Dissertation: Cultivating College Dreams: Social Pathways to Educational Attainment
Website
Nadia Persun
Clinician
Dissertation: Choosing Marriage or Cohabitation: Understanding Psychosocial Precedents and Effects on Personal and Relationship Satisfaction
Research: Close interpersonal relationships, intimacy and sexuality. Mental health: family systems and personal resilience
Sarah Van Deusen Phillips
Project Coordinator for Human Rights, Center for Research Libraries - Global Resources Network
Dissertation: When Looking is Listening: Gesture, Multi-Modal Language, and the Socialization of Deaf Children in Castellano-Speaking Families
Aarti Pyati
Case Western Reserve University, Counselor
Dissertation: Going the Cultural Distance: Worldview-relevant counseling at India's Premiere Psychiatric Institute
Jill Reichman
Dissertation: The Relationship of Acculturation and Folk Medical Beliefs in Recently Emigrated Mexican Nationals
Jerome Richardson
Deputy Director Department of Performance Management at Illinois Department of Public Health
Dissertation: Maternal Teaching Strategies: Their Impact beyond the Task Being Taught
Research: Substance abuse research with an emphasis on ethnic minority populations
Barnaby B. Riedel
University of Chicago, Masters of Arts Program in the Social Sciences Earl S. Johnson Instructor
Dissertation: The Character Conjuncture: Islamic Education and its Social Reproduction in the United States
Research: Cultural psychology; moral development; psychology/anthropology of religion; Islam
James Roney
University of California Santa Barbara Department of Psychology
Dissertation: Psychological and Hormonal Responses of Men to Sensory Cues from Women (William Henry Prize)
Research: Evolutionary psychology, human mating
Shana Fruehan Sandberg
Dissertation: Embodying Intimacy: Premarital Romantic Relationships, Sexuality, and Contraceptive Use Among Young Women in Contemporary Tokyo
Research: Sex, gender, and culture; Reproductive health and contraceptive use; Qualitative research methods; Japan.
Shaifali Sandhya
Alder School of Professional Psychology
Dissertation: A Study of Hindu Married Couples: The Role of Family Living Arrangements and Gender in Maintaining Happiness and Well-Being
Research: South Asian families and marriage with an upcoming book by Random House
Keith Sawyer
Washington University, Department of Education
Dissertation: The Performance of Pretend Play: Enacting Peer Culture in Conversation
Research: Conversational analysis and improvisation
Brian Schiff
American University of Paris, Department of Psychology
Dissertation: Telling survival and the Holocaust
Benjamin Smith
Research: Language and selfhood in middle childhood; reflexivity in language; evidentiality, modality, and reported speech; Andean languages and cultures; American psychotherapies; therapeutic discourse
David Paul Smith
Clinical practice in Chicago
Dissertation: Patterns of religion experience among psychotherapists and their relation to therapeutic orientation
Kerri Smith
Molecular Biology Group at the Coriell Institute for Medical Research
Research: Paternal kinship and social interactions among female yellow baboons
Stephanie Buttacavoli Sosa
Research Scientist II, Psychiatry, Columbia/New York State Psychiatric Institute
Dissertation: Emotion Display Rules and Well-Being in Small Town Yucatan: How Adaptive Emotion Response Alternatives Vary By Cultural Context
Kathy Stern
Clinical Trials Research at Abbott labs
Research: Pheromonal effects on human menstrual cycle
Brigitta Stolpe
Currently in a 10 year project documenting the cultural changes among tribal Kenyan villagers resulting from expansion of the national highway system, funded by the World Fund.
Dissertation: Cultural endocrinology: Menarch, Modernity and the Transformative Powers of Social Reconfigurations
Margarita Tarragona
Universidad Iberoamericanas Tijuana
Research: In search of family therapists: Who are they and what do they do?
Gregory Thompson
Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego
Dissertation: The Role of Interpersonal Recognition in Learning: Case Studies of Tutoring Interactions Between University Undergraduates and Inner-City High School Students.
Research: Developmental psychology; linguistic anthropology; development of "voice" in adolescence; language and identity in developmental perspective; the development of a "recognizable" self
Ning Wang
Arizona State University, School of Global Studies
Dissertation: The Making of a Market Economy: The Institutional Transformation of a Freshwater Fishery in a Chinese Community
Research: Political economy of China; structure of production; economic development
Website
Stanton Wortham
University of Pennsylvania, School of Education
Dissertation: Participant Examples and Classroom Interaction
Wenping Xue
Dissertation: Meaning in transmission: A case study of the psychological consequences of globalized consumption in China
Jason Yee
Postdoctoral Fellow, Brain-Body Center, University of Illinois at Chicago
Dissertation: Health and Sociality: Exploring Bidirectional Relationships Between Behavior and Physiology from a Systems Perspective
Research: Developmental psychobiology; behavioral neuroendocrinology; animal behavior; social role and temperament; social isolation; cancer
