Faculty Name

Research Interests

Dr. Jeffrey Ansloos

• Indigenous mental health and education, in particular:
  • Structural violence and complex trauma
  • Indigenous death, suicide, and life promotion
  • Indigenous social theories and applied community psychology
  • Decolonization, liberation, emancipation and futurism(s)
  • Sociopolitical dimensions of Indigenous mental health
  • Youth studies (Racialization; Social movements; Identity)
  • Qualitative, arts-based and new media research methodologies
  • Critical media and technology studies

Development of language and literacy skills in children enrolled in French immersion programs:

• Cross-language transfer between English (L1) and French (2)
• Performance of English language learners (trilinguals) in French immersion
• Early identification of reading difficulties and reading interventions for French immersion children
• Poor reading comprehension in French immersion children

Language, literacy and well-being in Arabic-speaking and Syrian refugee children:

• Development of English and maintenance of Arabic skills
• Contributions of demographic factors (e.g., SES, parent language, home language) to literacy development
• Relationship among language, literacy and well-being

Dr. Todd Cunningham

Lab website 

• Developing the Assistive Technology Selection Protocol to guide partners to identify the right technology
   
• Academic interventions for student-aged child who have learning difficulties, particularly:
  • The selection of assistive technology to address academic skill deficits
  • Increasing the effectiveness of assistive technology
  • Development of learning profiles to better identify academic intervention

• How personal identity develops in typical and atypical populations
   
• Personal conscious experience, both in contemporary cognitive science and in the history of psychology
• Personal wisdom in Canada, the USA, Serbia, Ukraine, India, and China
   
• The importance of wisdom to the successful acculturation of immigrants and refugees to Canada

• Early cognitive development
   
• Young children's learning about the world through symbolic means, such as language, pictures, videos, and replica objects
   
• Children's use of language to think and communicate about what is perceptually not present
   
• The social, linguistic and representational factors that influence children’s learning about the world

Dr. Esther Geva

Lab website

• The development of literacy skills in children learning to read in a second language
   
• The relationship between oral and written language skills in second language learners
   
• Cultural psychology pertaining to children's well-being such as parental attribution and concepts of wellness

Dr. Chloe Hamza

Website

• Promotion of mental health and well-being across the lifespan
   
• Prevention of self-injurious behaviours (e.g., nonsuicidal self-injury, suicidal behavior)
   
• Identifying protective and risk factors for self-injury
   
• Development of integrated mental health assessments to facilitate the early identification of students at risk for self-injury in schools and the larger community

Dr. Jennifer Jenkins

Website

• Emotion processes in children and in family life that help us to understand psychopathology in children
   
• Child development, family systems and developmental psychopathology
   
• Risk and resilience in child psychopathology (including within family differences in development)
   
• Theory of mind and emotion

Dr. Kang Lee

Website

• Development of Moral Conceptions of Lying in Adolescents
   
• Development of Face Processing Expertise
   
• Neural Mechanisms of Face Processing in Children and Adults
   
• Neural Mechanisms of Lying in Children and Adults

Dr. Michele Peterson-Badali

• Effective rehabilitation for justice-involved youth, including a focus on Indigenous youth
   
• Implementation of evidence-based assessment and intervention in the youth criminal justice system
   
• The role of mental health issues in youth justice system involvement

Dr. Mark Wade

• Effects of childhood stress and adversity on cognitive development and mental health
• Interaction between biological (genetic) and experiential (environmental) factors on development
• Resiliency in the aftermath of adverse childhood experiences
• Physiological, neural, cognitive, and socio-emotional pathways linking early adversity to mental health in childhood and adolescence
• Biomedical and prenatal exposures and child development