Nancy E. Hill, Ph.D.

Nancy E. Hill is President of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD). She is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on parenting and adolescent development. She, along with Alexis Redding, is the author of the recently published book, The End of Adolescence: The Lost Art of Delaying Adulthood, Harvard University Press, 2021, focused on the developmental benefits of delaying adulthood. In addition, Professor Hill’s research focuses in on two broader areas. First, she studies the ways race, socioeconomic status, and community context interact and impact youths’ opportunities for upward mobility, especially through secondary school and postsecondary transitions. Second, her research focuses on the relational supports and mechanisms associated with adolescents’ emerging sense of purpose and views of the economy as they influence post-secondary transitions to college and career. These include familial and school-based supportive relationships and how they support youth as they engage in school, succeed academically and hone their goals, aspirations, and sense of purpose. Hill is known for her work identifying developmentally sensitive strategies to maintain parental involvement in education during adolescence. Hill’s current research projects include two research-practice partnerships. One is a longitudinal study following adolescents across high school, focusing on economically and ethnically diverse youth and their emerging sense of purpose and views of the economy as they influence post-secondary transitions to college and career. The second is focused on academic engagement and postsecondary planning among immigrant youth. In addition, she and her colleagues are collaborating with a large urban school district on how families experience school choice and the impact on equitable access to high quality educational opportunities. Hill’s research has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals in the fields of developmental psychology and education, including Child Development, Developmental Psychology, and Journal of Educational Psychology. She has edited five books in the areas of parenting and academic achievement during adolescence and among ethnic minority populations.  Hill was a recipient of the William T. Grant Foundation’s Distinguished Faculty Fellowship to support her engagement with the Massachusetts’ Executive Office on Education, under Governor Deval Patrick. She was awarded the Ernest Hilgard Award for Lifetime contributions to psychology from Division 1 of the American Psychological Association. Hill was named to the National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) Board on Children Youth and Families.