Anna D. Johnson is a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Georgetown University. A hybrid scholar with degrees in Developmental Psychology and Public Policy, Johnson’s research sits at the intersection of the two disciplines. Specifically, Dr. Johnson’s research program evaluates the effects of low-income children’s early educational experiences, as well as obstacles to healthy development such as food insecurity, on their kindergarten readiness and school success. To address these questions, Dr. Johnson blends the theory and measures of developmental psychology with advanced quantitative and econometric methods. Dr. Johnson’s research has been continually funded by federal and private grants, including from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development at the NIH, the Foundation for Child Development, and the Spencer Foundation, and published in top developmental and education journals. In 2015, Johnson was awarded an Early Career Research Contributions Award from the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) and in 2016 she was the recipient of SRCD’s Victoria S. Levin Award for Early Career Success in Young Children’s Mental Health and an Emerging Scholar of the Self-Sufficiency Research Clearinghouse. In 2017, Dr. Johnson was awarded a Foundation for Child Development Young Scholars award.
Dr. Johnson is accepting a graduate student for the 2025-2026 school year.
Anna Johnson
Rebecca M. Ryan is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Georgetown University. Most broadly, Professor Ryan’s research explores the implications of low-income for children’s home environments and as well as the relationship between parenting and children’s development in at-risk contexts. Both strains of research explore two fundamental influences on child well-being: the quality of parent-child interactions and the time and material resources parents are able to invest in children’s development. Her recent work explores the attitudes and beliefs that shape parental investments in children and how interventions in the home and online can enhance and increase those investments. Specifically, she is fielding a randomized controlled trial of a parenting and coparenting intervention with caregivers of infants using videochat, video-feedback and digital media to enhance parent-child and coparent interactions. She is also conducting a field experiment to increase participation in a novel home meal program, Power Packs, serving low-income, predominantly Latinx families in two semi-rural school districts; the study will also evaluate program effects on family food insecurity and nutrition, child wellbeing and academic outcomes. Her research has been continuously funded by both federal and private institutions, including the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the WT Grant Foundation.
Rebecca Ryan
Kristia Wantchekon is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Georgetown University. She joined the faculty in fall 2022, after completing her Ph.D. and postdoctoral training at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the developmental processes through which adolescents and young adults come to understand themselves with respect to their race and ethnicity as well as the diversity of beliefs and feelings they can hold about their ethnic-racial group membership. She studies the implications of these identity processes and beliefs for young peoples’ psychosocial adjustment (e.g., mental health, academic outcomes, social skills) and resilience in the face of ethnic-racial discrimination. She is also interested in how ethnic-racial identity formation takes place in the school context and works to bridge theory and empirical research with practice to inform school-based interventions seeking to positively intervene in youths’ ethnic-racial identity development. She and her research have been funded by several organizations such as the Ford Foundation, the Society for Research on Adolescence, the Society for Research on Child Development, and the American Psychological Association.
Dr. Wantchekon is accepting a graduate student for the 2025-2026 school year.
Kristia Wantchekon
Deborah Phillips
Deborah Phillips served as Professor of Psychology, and Associated Faculty of Public Policy at Georgetown University for over 20 years. She was the first Executive Director of the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine and served as Study Director for From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Child Development. She also served as President of the Foundation for Child Development, Director of Child Care Information Services at the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and Congressional Science Fellow on the staff of Congressman George Miller. Dr. Phillips has served on the National Board for Education Sciences (U.S. Department of Education), the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child at Harvard University, and the Research Advisory Board of the Committee on Economic Development. Her research on the developmental impacts of early education – child care, pre-k programs, and Head Start – has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Child Care Bureau, and numerous national foundations, as well as recognized at White House conferences and in the State of the Union address. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society. She received the 2011 Distinguished Contributions to Education in Child Development Award from the Society for Research in Child Development.
Dr. Phillips retired in 2023, though she is still very connected to the CDSP lab as a former co-PI!
