Sep. 13, 2021

Antoinette Landor

Dr. Antoinette Landor received a PhD in Human Development and Family Science from the University of Georgia in 2012 and completed a National Institutes of Health (NIH) postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Her research program broadly focuses on how family and sociocultural factors impact adolescent and young adult outcomes in the U.S. and across the African Diaspora. She does this through studies that address two lines of work. The first focus is understanding how discrimination based on skin tone (i.e., lightness/darkness of skin color; colorism) and race (e.g., being Black; racism) impact individual, relational, and family…

Aug. 8, 2021

Melissa Herzog

Dr. Melissa Herzog earned her PhD in Family & Human Development from Arizona State University in 2007, along with a Master’s degree in Marriage and Family Therapy in 2004. Since joining the Mizzou faculty, Dr. Herzog’s work has focused on prevention and intervention approaches to promote thriving in social and romantic relationships, including leadership positions in applied curriculum development and program evaluation. She is Co-PI for ShowMe Healthy Relationships, a federally-funded relationship education program serving single, adult Missourians. Within this work, Dr. Herzog is particularly interested in investigating correlates of response to intervention as well as the impact of relationship…

Aug. 2, 2021

Sarah Killoren

Dr. Sarah Killoren received her Ph.D. (2008) in Family and Human Development from Arizona State University. Her program of research focuses on associations between interpersonal relationships, culture, and adolescent and young adult adjustment. Currently, she is conducting studies on a) sibling relationships and youth’s experiences of stress; b) Latinx young adults’ romantic relationships; and c) female college students’ family relationships and their well-being. Her previous work includes projects focused on sisters’ communication about romantic relationships and sexuality and Mexican-origin college students’ well-being. She uses several different data collection techniques including in-depth interviews, surveys, and observations, and work with both quantitative…

July 27, 2021

Kale Monk

Dr. Kale Monk earned his M.S. in Couple and Family Therapy from Kansas State University in 2013 and his PhD in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of Illinois in 2017. His research primarily centers on romantic relationship quality and instability. More specifically, he is interested in how couples develop and maintain key relational processes (e.g., stability in commitment and satisfaction) across critical transitions (e.g., the transition to adulthood, the transition to marriage). Transitions provide the unique opportunity to understand change in relationships given that these critical periods require adjustments in how partners interact and react to each…

July 20, 2021

Rachel Thibodeau-Nielsen

Dr. Rachel Thibodeau-Nielsen earned her PhD in Developmental Science and Cognitive Psychology with a minor in statistics from the University of Alabama in 2017.  Dr. Thibodeau-Nielsen’s research focuses on enhancing children’s school readiness and overall well-being by identifying mechanisms and developing interventions to improve cognitive and socio-emotional skills among preschoolers, particularly those who experience adversity in early childhood. Her primary interest is to examine play as a mechanism for development in early childhood. Her work shows that imaginative or pretend play — which involves cooperation, flexible thinking, shared emotions and support among peers and adults — can lay the foundation…

Aug. 12, 2018

Robert Petrone

Dr. Robert Petrone (he/him/his), Associate Professor, is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work lives between English, American Studies, and Sociology, with applications for Education. The central framework for Dr. Petrone’s integrated program of research, teaching, and service is Critical Youth Studies, which offers an important critique to the dominance of developmentalist frameworks in American society that often position people known as teenagers in deficit ways and naturalize expectations for them rooted in dominant sociocultural norms. From this foundation, Dr. Petrone’s research and teaching explores four lines of inquiry, the most recent of which takes up creative writing as a mode…