I am currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience at Temple University in Philadelphia (USA). The department is home to a thriving Psychology program and is closely connected to the Neuroscience Program in the College of Liberal Arts at Temple.

I am President of the Society for the Study of Human Development, and I have been a board member at the Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology (COGDOP). I was Associate Editor at Developmental Science and the International Journal of Behavioral Development for six years, and I carried out four years of service on the Psychosocial Development, Risk and Prevention (PDRP) study section at NIH. My research at Temple has been funded by various sources including NSF, NIH, and the James S. McDonnell Foundation.

I received my Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1997, where my advisor was Joan Stevenson-Hinde. I carried out postdoctoral research with Nathan Fox at the University of Maryland, where I became a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development. I moved to a tenure track Assistant Professor position at Temple University in 2004. I was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor in 2010, promoted to Full Professor in 2015, and I became Department Chair in 2016.

I also have held a visiting appointment at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle.