Primary Researchers
Dan P. McAdams, PhD
Dan P. McAdams is the Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology and Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Professor McAdams received his BS degree from Valparaiso University in 1976 and his PhD in psychology and social relations from Harvard University in 1979. Honored as a Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence at Northwestern, Professor McAdams teaches courses in Personality Psychology, Adult Development and Aging, Theories of Human Development, the Psychology of Life Stories, and other topics.
Şebnem Türe
Şebnem Türe is a doctoral student in the Personality, Development, and Health program at Northwestern University. She received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a minor in Communication and Design from Bilkent University, Turkey. Before graduate school, she was also a radio speaker and a writer of various local newspapers. Her research centers on narrative identity, where she examines how personal life stories are influenced by individual differences, cultural context, and history, and how autobiographical reasoning might relate to psychological and physical health outcomes. She’s also interested in adult development, focusing on late midlife adults and their motivations in life and interpersonal relationships. Outside of her studies, she enjoys writing, playing the violin, and traveling.
Ananya Mayukha
Ananya Mayukha is a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology at Northwestern University. She received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Neuroscience at Williams College. Ananya traces her interest in life stories back to a high school philosophy class, which centered around the question, “Who am I?” This question has guided her work, which includes a one-year travel fellowship that allowed her to study human connection around the world and two years at a nonprofit in her hometown, where she facilitated spaces for reflection and healing centered around racial justice. Her research interests lie at the intersection of race, spirituality, and the question of what it means to be alive.
Courtney Jones
Courtney Meiling Jones is a doctoral student in the Personality, Development, and Health Psychology program at Northwestern University. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Carleton College. Before graduate school, Courtney was part of a research team at New York University which investigated how parents’ beliefs in Nanjing, China and New York City interfaced with larger norms of relationality, individuality, and success. Her current research focuses on racial identity development in multiracial youth and adults, attending to the ways in which social and political context may influence changes in racial identity over the lifecourse.
Molly Weinstein
Molly Weinstein is a doctoral student in Management and Organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business. She received her bachelor’s degree in history and political science from Tufts University. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, she worked as a corporate social responsibility consultant, a role which inspired her research interest in the career experiences of both nonprofit and corporate professionals. Molly’s research focuses on how master narratives about career and work inform people’s narrative identity, and vice versa. Currently, she investigates the influence of American discourses about meaningful, purpose-driven work on both individuals and organizations.
Ariana Turner
Ariana Turner is a doctoral student in the Personality, Development, and Health Psychology program at Northwestern University. She received her master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from Northwestern University and her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Scripps College. Her research focuses on how different facets of identity (i.e. culture, ethnicity, gender) and developmental trajectories influence narrative identity and its relation to psychosocial adaptation.
Hollen Reischer
Hollen Reischer is a doctoral student in the Clinical Psychology program at Northwestern University. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology and documentary studies at Duke University. Hollen has extensive experience facilitating, documenting, editing, and publishing underserved adults’ life stories. She has also worked with a number of organizations to advance social and environmental justice causes. Hollen is particularly interested in the life narratives of marginalized and underrepresented people, with a focus on meaning-making, identity, and values.
Henry Raffles Cowan
Henry Raffles Cowan is a doctoral student in the Clinical Psychology program at Northwestern University. He received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and criminology at the University of Toronto, and worked in addictions and geriatrics at Toronto’s Centre for Addition and Mental Health before joining the Foley team at Northwestern. His research focuses on narrative aspects of mental illness, particularly on interactions between personal, cultural, and institutional interpretations of mental health and mental illness.
Leah Ouellet
Leah Ouellet is a doctoral student in the Human Development and Social Policy program at Northwestern University. She received her bachelor’s degree in public policy from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in criminal justice from Wayne State University. Prior to starting at Northwestern, she worked as a mitigation specialist on behalf of juvenile lifers at Michigan’s State Appellate Defender Office and facilitated poetry workshops inside Michigan prisons. Leah is interested in how narrative identity intersects with sentencing policy and decision-making, with a focus on cultural scripts, identity development, and ideas about punishment and redemption.
Carolyn Pichert Swen
Carolyn Pichert Swen is a doctoral student in the Human Development and Social Policy program at Northwestern University. She received her bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in politics and master’s degrees from the University of Chicago in international relations and public policy. She has worked domestically and abroad in non-profit organizations as well as government agencies. She is interested in how culture and context influence peoples’ narrative identity. She is currently researching principals’ professional identity and how it changes during their first years as new principals.
Jiffy Lansing
Jiffy Lansing is a PhD candidate in the Human Development and Social Policy program at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on the intersection of identity development during emerging adulthood and social contexts that can challenge the transition to a stable, satisfying, and successful adulthood. These contexts include institutions and programs serving community college students, incarcerated youth, young people aging out of foster care, and youth at-risk of dropping out of high-school. Lansing has extensive training and experience in qualitative and mixed methods research approaches. Prior to her graduate work at Northwestern, Lansing was a senior researcher at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago where she led and contributed to a range of applied research studies that informed policy and program implementation for young people during critical transitions and social contexts. Lansing received her M.A. in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University, her A.M. in Social Science from the University of Chicago, and her B.A. in Sociology from Tufts University.
Regina Lopata Logan, PhD
Regina Logan is a research assistant professor at Northwestern University. She is the director of the Foley Longitudinal Study of Adulthood (FLSA). Professor Logan teaches Adulthood and Aging, Gender and the Life Course, and Career Development. Dr. Logan’s research and interest areas include gender issues, career development, generativity, and wisdom in adulthood. She is also interested in the effects of race on development and has begun a project looking at how historical events are narrated, focusing on differences of race and gender. In addition, Dr. Logan has extensive experience in teaching and learning in adulthood. Professor Logan has been named to the student government’s Honor Roll of best faculty three times, and in 2009 she received the Outstanding Faculty Award from the School of Education and Social Policy.
Affiliates
Jonathan M. Adler, PhD
Jonathan M. Adler received his PhD in clinical and personality psychology in 2009 from Northwestern University, where he was an active member of the Foley Center for the Study of Lives. He is currently an associate professor of psychology at Olin College of Engineering in Needham, Massachusetts. He is also an Associate Editor at Journal of Personality and the Chief Scientific Officer of Health Story Collaborative, a Boston-area non-profit that works with medical patients to help them craft and share their stories of illness and healing. His research focuses on the interface between adult development and clinical psychology. Broadly conceived, his research interests revolve around the reciprocal relationships between identity processes and psychological functioning. He is especially interested in identifying the most productive ways people make sense of the difficult things that happen to them and how that personal meaning facilitates changes in identity. In other words, he is interested in how the process of making sense of negative experiences influences important life outcomes, including mental health, personality maturity, and the process and outcome of psychotherapy treatment. His research has been covered by the New York Times, National Public Radio, The Atlantic, Scientific American, and Huffington Post, among other outlets.
Jack J. Bauer, PhD
Jack Bauer, PhD is a professor of psychology at the University of Dayton. Bauer worked as a Foley post-doctoral fellow from 1999 to 2002. Bauer studies how themes of integration and growth in life stories correspond to eudaemonic personality development, looking at samples from college students through old age. He is a former associate editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, co-editor of Transcending Self-Interest: Psychological Explorations of the Quiet Ego (APA Books), and author of the forthcoming The Transformative Self: Identity, Growth, and a Good Life Story (Oxford).
Keith Cox, PhD
Keith Cox is a clinician and researcher on the PTSD Clinical Team at the Charleston VA Medical Center and a Clinical Assistant Faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina. He studies, among other things, how individuals make meaning out of emotionally intense experiences, sometimes traumatic ones. His work with the Foley Forum and the Foley Longitudinal Study of Adulthood has centered on the high and low point episodes in the life story, and how characteristics of these emotionally intense memories relate to indices of personality traits, emotional functioning, emotion regulation, and subjective well-being.
Ed de St. Aubin, PhD
Ed de St. Aubin is an associate professor of psychology at Marquette University in Milwaukee. Ed de St. Aubin received his PhD in human development and social policy from Northwestern University. He and McAdams have collaborated on studies of generativity, and they are co-editors of Generativity and Adult Development: How and Why We Care for the Next Generation (APA Press, 1998) and The Generative Society (APA Press, 2003). Dr. de St. Aubin’s scholarship continues in the personological tradition that defines the Foley Center. His current efforts focus on adult personality development with an emphasis on personal ideology, ego development, sexuality and the narrative construction of self.
Will Dunlop, PhD (In Memory)
Will Dunlop was an assistant professor of social/personality psychology at the University of California, Riverside. A graduate of the doctoral program in social, personality, and developmental psychology at the University of British Columbia, Dunlop had examined the role of redemptive stories in the recovery process of alcoholics. More recently, he had launched a research program examining the structure and development of personality.
Phillip L. Hammack, PhD
Phillip L. Hammack is an associate professor of psychology at University of California, Santa Cruz. Hammack received his Ph.D. in comparative human development from the University of Chicago. He has quickly become the leading figure in the study of culture and narrative. His influential research programs examine the life stories of Israeli and Palestinian youth, the role of master cultural narratives in perpetuating societal conflict, and narratives of sexual identity development in a changing sociopolitical landscape. Hammack has already won three prestigious national awards for his theoretical and empirical contributions to social, developmental and cultural psychology.
Brady Jones, PhD
Brady Jones earned her doctorate in human development and social policy at Northwestern University in 2015. She received her bachelor’s degree from DePauw University in Spanish and a master’s degree from Northwestern University in education and social policy. She has worked in K-12 schools in several capacities, most recently as a teacher of high school Spanish. She studies adolescent and adult development and flourishing, specifically how personality – holistically defined – can be leveraged to make individuals happier, healthier, and more successful in schools, organizations, and their careers.
Miriam Klevan, LCSW, PhD
Miriam Klevan received her PhD in human development and social policy from Northwestern in 2012, where she studied the life narratives of parents who adopted after experiencing infertility. She is currently a psychotherapist in private practice. Her clinical interests include infertility, adoption, and helping couples, families and individuals adjust to medical conditions, including chronic pain, traumatic brain injury, cancer and multiple sclerosis. She has published on infertility and adoption in both the academic and popular press and taught at the School of Education and Social Policy.
Jen Pals Lilgendahl, PhD
Research by Jen Pals Lilgendahl examines processes of self-definition and identity construction in adolescence and adulthood, with a specific focus on how people connect memories of past events to the present self through the narration of a life story. She is primarily interested in narratives of very negative and identity-challenging life experiences. She identifies individual differences in how adults interpret such experiences in relation to self (e.g., growth, regret, defensive minimization) and relate those differences to personality, social/cultural contexts and important outcomes in adult life, including well-being, maturity and physical health.
Jennifer Lodi-Smith, PhD
Jennifer Lodi-Smith is an assistant professor of psychology at Canisius College. Lodi-Smith received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, working with Professor Brent Roberts, one of the preeminent figures in the study of personality trait development. Using a multi-method approach to understand identity, Lodi-Smith has done important studies on narrating personality change and on the role of life narratives in healthy aging.
Kate McLean, PhD
Kate McLean is a professor of psychology at Western Washington University. Trained at the University of California at Santa Cruz under the guidance of Avril Thorne (a pioneering researcher on life narratives), McLean is probably the most prolific and influential young scholar in the study of narrative identity today. She has published a large number of studies examining a wide range of developmental issues, from the challenges of narrating negative events among young adolescents to the role of autobiographical reasoning strategies in midlife narrative identity development.
Nicky Newton, PhD
Nicky Newton is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Wilfred Laurier University, in Canada. She is conducting follow-up data collections for two longitudinal studies based at the University of Michigan: The Radcliffe Class of 1964, and the Women’s Life Paths Study. Newton received her PhD in personality and social contexts psychology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Nicky uses both qualitative and quantitative methods in her research, which focuses on correlates of adult personality development, through the lenses of gender and race. Current research projects include: personality and experienced well-being; how gratitude is experienced in later life; positive personality development in older men and women; and expressions of regret over time. Nicky received the Elizabeth Douvan Junior Scholar Fund in Life Course Development in 2011.
Monisha Pasupathi, PhD
Monisha Pasupathi is a Professor of Psychology at University of Utah. Pasupathi trained at Stanford and the Max Plank Institute in Berlin, Pasupathi is one of the world’s leading authorities on the role of socio-cultural factors and interpersonal relationships in the development of narrative identity. Her work spans the fields of social psychology, cultural studies, and life-span developmental psychology.
Moin Syed, PhD
Moin Syed is an associate professor of psychology at University of Minnesota. A graduate of University of California at Santa Cruz, Syed studies the development of narrative identity in adolescence and young adulthood, with an emphasis on ethnic minority and immigrant populations. Syed’s work is notable for its blending of innovative narrative approaches and especially sophisticated statistical techniques.
Joshua Wilt, PhD
Joshua Wilt is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of psychological sciences at Case Western Reserve University. He received his PhD in personality psychology from Northwestern University in 2014, where he was an active member of the Foley Center for the Study of Lives. His research is broadly concerned with investigating affective, behavioral, cognitive, and desire (ABCD) components that are relevant to personality structure and function. His current research examines ABCDs within the context of personality traits and life-story episodes. He is also interested in how traits and features of narrative identity relate to the psychology of religion and spirituality, with a specific focus on the experience of religious and spiritual struggles.
Ursula Moffitt, Ph.D
Ursula Moffitt is an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow working with Onnie Rogers in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University. Ursula’s research focuses primarily on racial, gender, and national identity among children through emerging adults. She draws on multiple methods, but is particularly interested in narrative identity research as a means to examine the reciprocal relations between individuals and societal norms, expectations, and policies.
Onnie Rogers, Ph.D
Onnie Rogers, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Faculty Fellow with the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. Rogers studies identity development among racially/ethnically diverse children and adolescents in sociocultural contexts with a focus on intersectionality, stereotypes, multiple identities, and psychosocial wellbeing. She is an editor for Journal of Adolescent Research and directs the Development of Identities in Cultural Environments (DICE) research lab.