May 2026 Spotlight: Danhua Zhu, Ph.D.

Q: What drew you to work on Asians, Asian American children and youth, or another topic that is important to you now? What advice would you offer to someone starting out in the field and working in your area?

A: I am currently a postdoctoral fellow supported by the Women in Research (WiRe) Fellowship at the University of Münster, Germany. The core questions driving my research are how parents’ emotion-related practices impact child development in diverse families, and how these practices are shaped by culture. In particular, I have been working with Chinese-heritage families of children and youth in mainland China, the United States (US), and Australia to explore both within- and cross-cultural variation. Things that drew me into the field of parental emotion socialization in Asian populations included not only my own upbringing and lived experiences across China, the US, and Germany, but also the culturally salient values we endorse regarding emotions and emotional development, as well as the distinct challenges we face as a whole or individually. 

Q: Describe a particular recent finding, current study, or recent publication and what makes you excited about it.

A: One of my ongoing projects is investigating parents’ emotion-centered ethnic-racial socialization in Chinese-heritage families, funded by the SRCD 2024 small grants for early career scholars. Asian American children in the US must contend with historically pervasive narratives of the model minority stereotype and the perpetual foreigner stereotype as well as rhetoric and biases under ongoing geopolitical tensions between the US and China. It is critical to study factors that contribute to Asian American children’s coping and adjustment in the face of discrimination, which can elicit strong emotions. Our project focuses on parental socialization as one of the contributing factors and highlights parents’ emotion-related socialization practices that are integral to their ethnic-racial socialization in Chinese-heritage families. We have conducted qualitative interviews and observations with 35 families of parents and their 10- to 13-year-old children (20 Chinese American, 15 Chinese Australian) and are currently coding the data to identify families’ race- and emotion-related experiences, and their culturally salient, emotion-centered racial socialization strategies.

Q: Share your reflections on your interactions with the Asian Caucus.

A: I value being part of the Asian Caucus as a space that facilitates dialogue and collaboration among Asian scholars and is dedicated to supporting the career development of Asian researchers from diverse backgrounds. It is a vibrant community with inspiring scholars committed to advancing developmental research that is contextualized and culturally sensitive.

Q: Any upcoming talks or presentations we should know about?

A: I plan to attend this year’s International Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology in Leuven, Belgium. I very much look forward to all the cultural and intellectual exchanges as well as (re)connecting with colleagues who will be attending!

For more information about Danhua Zhu, Ph.D.:

https://www.uni-muenster.de/PsyIFP/AEKaertner/en/team/zhu.html