Dr. Ursula Moffitt, Educational Psychology; Individual, Family, and Community Education
Name:
Dr. Ursula Moffitt
Title:
Assistant Professor
Department:
Dr. Ursula Moffitt, Educational Psychology; Individual, Family, and Community Education
Describe your research in about 200 words:
Trained in cultural, developmental, and educational psychology, I take our inequitable society as a starting point for all my work, focusing in particular on white supremacy, patriarchy, and their intersection. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, I situate youth in micro- and macro-level context, studying how young people navigate family, school, and society as they develop beliefs and behaviors that alternately perpetuate or resist societal inequity. Additionally, I turn the lens on psychological research itself, examining how the methods, measures, and terms we use either reinforce or resist harm. Having received graduate training in Germany, I work with colleagues and participants in both the U.S. and European contexts. My work has been published in Child Development, the Journal of Research on Adolescence, and the European Psychologist, among other outlets. In 2023, I was awarded the Early Career Research Contributions Award from the Society for Research in Child Development. I am currently a Consulting Editor at the journal Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology and an Associate Editor at Identity, where I am also co-editing a special issue on identity in the context of migration, due out in winter 2024/2025.
What’s the most interesting thing you have learned from a student?
One of the most interesting things I’ve learned from students is how diverse the interpretation and application of in-class material can be. As educators, we often prepare a course expecting a certain outcome, but when students give feedback about what they have taken away from a given topic or exercise, I love it when unanticipated connections are made. It’s a good reminder of how our lived experiences shape knowledge production and learning processes.