Chase-Lansdale, P. Lindsay

Lindsay Chase-Lansdale is a leading developmental psychologist who has pioneered multidisciplinary research designed to influence social policy for children. Her intellectual perspective combines the study of societal conditions that may harm families, with an emphasis on investigating the full range of effects on families and children, including families' strengths, adaptations, and vulnerabilities. She specializes in the socioemotional development of children, adolescents, and young adults in addition to family functioning and family process. A central cross-cutting theme in her research is a focus on children and families in poverty.

Chase-Lansdale was the first developmental psychologist to be tenured at a major school of public policy in the nation, the Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy, at the University of Chicago. Since 1999, her academic home has been Northwestern University, where she holds appointments as a professor in the Human Development and Social Policy Program and as faculty fellow in the Institute for Policy Research.

Chase-Lansdale is one of a handful of senior developmentalists who are forging a new multidisciplinary field: developmental science. Her books are illustrious in their interdisciplinary approaches to social problems: Escape From Poverty: What Makes a Difference for Children? For Better and for Worse: Welfare Reform and the Well-Being of Children and Families; and Human Development Across Lives and Generations: The Potential for Change. She has belonged to a number of pathbreaking multidisciplinary research networks: the MacArthur Network on the Family and the Economy (since 1996); the Social Science Research Council's Research Group on Communities, Neighborhoods, Family Process, and Individual Development (1990–1996); and the National Institute of Mental Health's Research Consortium on Family Risk and Resilience (1990–1996). She is the first research scientist to be elected chair of the board of directors of the Foundation for Child Development, the oldest continuing philanthropy for children, whose mission is to foster research and policies that benefit children in poverty.