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.
Karen Hunt Ahmed
Depaul University, College of Commerce
Assistant Professor of Finance and Management
Webpage: http://works.bepress.com/karen_hunt_ahmed//
Jacqueline Allen
Clinician
Michael Axelman
Stanford University, School of Education
Research: The relational experiences of African-American adolescents and the role of significant adults: An examination of teenage lives during the transition to high school
Sue Bae
Illinois School of Professional Psychology
Research: Cross-cultural psychology, cultural diversity, and development of psychotherapists
Will Bennis
Northwestern University. Postdoctoral Fellow, Dept. of Psychology
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.
Ronan Surtida Bernas
Eastern Illinois University, Department of Psychology
Research: Choosing and maintaining a position on a socio-moral Issue: An argumentative reasoning approach
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 Counselling
Research: Self-image of Malaysian adolescents
Nicole Brodsky
Independent film producer for educational television
Research: Art imitates life imitates art: Evolving themes in the lives and works of creative artists
Joseph Calabrese
Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Hospital. Clinical Fellow in Psychology in the Behavioral Medicine Program.
Julia Cassaniti
UC San Diego, Teaching Fellow
Dissertation title: "Control in a world of change: Emotion and Morality in a Northern Thai town"
In-Soo Choe
Sungkyunkwan University, Department of Psychology
Research: Motivation, subjective experience, family and academic achievement in Korean high school students
Cindy Dell Clark
Penn State University, Human Development and Family Studies
Research: Children, culture and the imagination
Suzanne Cox
Beloit College, Department of Psychology
Research: Infant attachment, developmental psychology and women's studies
Bianca Dahl
University of California at San Diego, B.A., summa cum laude, Communication and French Literature
Research: Sociocultural and medical anthropology, transnational development, orphaned children, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, kinship, social change, non-governmental organizations, Botswana
Elizabeth Davies
Asst Professor, Chicago School of Professional Psychology
David Scott DeBoer
Core Center, Cook County Hospital for adolescents with AIDS
Research: Psychological responses of HIV-positive gay men in the post era of HIV and AIDS
Eric S. De Vos
Professor of Psychology, Saginaw Valley State University
Richard Epstein
Bates College. B.A. in Psychology
Brent Finger
Post-Doctoral Associate, SUNY Buffalo
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
Heidi Fung
Academia Sinica, Taipei, Institute of Ethnology
Research: Self construction through narrative practices
Holly Furdyna
UCLA's Center for Culture and Health, Research Fellow
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
Research Professor, Child Development Department, Tufts University
Research: Children's understandings of everyday economic practices
Christine L. Glover
McHenry County College. Instructor of Psychology
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 Gortner
Church Divinity School of the Pacific. Asst. Professor, Pastoral Theology
Andrew Guest
University of Portland, Asst. Professor of Psychology
Research: Cultural psychology of doing good, particularly in relation to sport, the development enterprise, and education
Phil Hammack
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz
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
Associate Professor & Director of Clinical Training in the Doctoral Psychology Program, California Institute of Integral Studies
Joel Hektner
North Dakota State University, Department of Child Development and Family Science
Research: Exploring optimal personality development: A longitudinal study of adolescents
Gretchen Hermes
University of Chicago, MD Resident in Psychiatry
Research: Psychosocial contexts and health; religion and healing; psychoanalysis
Annette Iskra
Cleveland State University, M.A. in Experimental Psychology
Case Western Reserve University, Masters in Social Science Administration
Cleveland State University, B.A. in Social Work
Lene Arnett Jensen
Catholic University, Department of Psychology
Research: 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
Research: The psychotherapeutic relationship in Korea: Cross-national and internal cultural comparison
Craig Joseph
Research: The Virtues as a Cultural Domain: a Study of Arabic-Speaking Muslims
Ernst Karel
Harvard University, Department of Anthropology, Media Anthropology Lab Manager
Research: Kerala Sound Electricals: Amplified sound and cultural meaning in South India
Leann Helka Kinnunen
Columbia University, Department of Psychiatry, Postdoctoral Fellow
Research: Evidence Concerning the Etiology of Sexual Orientation in Human Males: Differential Effects of Fluoxetine on Cerbral Glucose Metabolism of Exclusively Homosexual and Exclusively Heterosexual Men
Michele Koven
University of Illinois, Department of Speech Communication
Research: French-Portuguese bilinguals' enactments of self In two languages
John Lucy
University of Chicago, Committee on Human Development
Research: Comparative and developmental perspectives on language and thought
Julie Mennella
Monell Chemical Senses Center
Research: Social control of infanticidal behavior in rats
Usha Menon
Drexel University, Department of Social Relations
Research: 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
College of the Holy Cross, Department of Psychology
Research: Social construction of self-esteem: narrative discourse practices among parents and preschool children
Neely Anne Laurenzo Myers
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) Myers Jr.
Associate Professor, Environmental Studies, Huxley College of the Environment, Western Washington
University
Research: Conservation Psychology; Human Development and non-human animals; environmental
identity;environmental education
Jeanne Nakamura
Quality of Life Research Center at the Drucker School of Management, Director of the Good Work Project
Patrick Nickoletti
University of Colorado's Kempe Children's Center, Postdoctoral Fellow
Research: The impact of social status on preschoolers' display of direct and ritualized responses to peer conflict
Douglas Novotny
Clinician
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.
Lara C. Perez-Felkner
Post-Doctoral Fellow at NORC at The University of Chicago
Dissertation title: "Cultivating College Dreams: Social Pathways to Educational Attainment"
http://home.uchicago.edu/~larap
Nadia Persun
Clinician
Aarti Pyati
Case Western Reserve University, Counselor
Jill Reichman
Director, Santa Fe Institute for Social Research
Research: The Relationship of Acculturation and Folk Medical Beliefs in Recently Emigrated Mexican Nationals
Jerome Richardson
University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Psychiatry
Research: Substance abuse research with an emphasis on ethnic minority populations
James Roney
UC Santa Barbara. Assistant Prof. of Psychology
University of Chicago, Ph.D in Human Development
University of Chicago, Institute for Mind and Biology, Postdoctoral Fellow
Research: Evolutionary psychology, human mating
Shaifali Sandhya
Core Faculty at the Alder School of Professional Psychology
Research: South Asian families and marriage with an upcoming book by Random House
Keith Sawyer
Washington University, Department of Education
Research: Conversational analysis and improvisation
Brian Schiff
Saint Martin's College, Department of Psychology
Research: Telling survival and the Holocaust
David Paul Smith
Clinical practice in Chicago
Research: 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
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.
Margarita Tarragona
Universidad de las Americas
Research: In search of family therapists: Who are they and what do they do?
Manasi Tirodkar
Boston University-International Honors Program, Health & Community Faculty
Post-doc at NU
Ning Wang
Arizona State University, Assistant Professor of Global Studies
Stanton Wortham
University of Pennsylvania, School of Education
Research: Participant examples and classroom Interaction
Wenping Xue
Dissertation title: "Meaning in transmission: A case study of the psychological consequences of globalized consumption in China"
Jason Yee
Pennsylvania State University, B.S. in Biobehavioral Health
Universite Louis Pasteur, Maitrise in Neuroscience
Research: Developmental psychobiology; behavioral neuroendocrinology; animal behavior; social role and temperament; social isolation; cancer
