Rebecca Ryan
Rebecca Ryan is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Georgetown University.
She came to Georgetown after completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy Studies in Fall 2009. She earned a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University in 2006. Most broadly, her research explores the implications of socioeconomic disadvantage for children’s home environments and well-being 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 parents’ ability to invest time and money in children’s environments. Her recent work includes a randomized controlled trial of a parenting-coparenting intervention, Connect to Baby, that she co-developed with fellow Georgetown Professor, Rachel Barr, for caregivers of infants. She is also currently conducting a mixed methods evaluation of a local food assistance program, Power Packs, for school-aged children at Title I schools in Pennsylvania. 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 W.T. Grant Foundation. Her overarching aim is to link developmental psychology to child and family policy in an effort to enrich both fields.