Melanie Killen

Melanie Killen is a professor of human development and quantitative methodology, professor of psychology, and the associate director for the Center for Children, Relationships, and Culture. Killen’s areas of expertise include children's and adolescents' social and moral reasoning, peer relationships, prejudice and bias, gender roles, social development and the role of school environments on development.

Killen's research has been profiled in The New York Times, The Washington Post, American Scientist, The Chronicle of Higher Education, American School Board Journal, ABCNews.com, Newsweek.com, Parenting, Parent–Wise Magazine and Redbook, as well as featured on CNN's AC360 with Anderson Cooper and Soledad O’Brien.

She is the author of Children and Social Exclusion: Morality, Prejudice and Group Identity (2011) and coauthor of Social Development in Childhood and Adolescence: A Contemporary Reader (2011). She has coedited five books and published more than 110 empirical journal articles and book chapters.

Killen served as an expert witness in a school desegregation case and helped prepare two Supreme Court briefs regarding the impact of school desegregation on children’s social development. She has also served as a consultant for a federal initiative on interventions designed to reduce prejudice and to promote inclusion in U.S. elementary schools.

Education:

Ph.D. Developmental Psychology, University of California, Berkeley

M.A. Developmental Psychology, University of California, Berkeley

B.A. Psychology, Clark University