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 not accepting graduate students for the 2023-2024 school year.
Anna Johnson
Rebecca M. Ryan is a Provost’s Distinguished Associate 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 parents’ ability to invest time and money in children’s environments. Her recent work explores how parenting practices have changed over time and the implications of those changes for socioeconomic differences in parenting behavior and child wellbeing. To do this work, Professor Ryan draws data from large nationally representative surveys and, more recently, from social media data gathered online. Additionally, she is studying the effects of a novel food assistance program, the Power Packs Project, on family functioning and child wellbeing among low-income families in rural 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 Spencer Foundation.
Dr. Ryan is accepting new graduate students for the 2023-2024 school year.
Rebecca Ryan
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!
