Infant Parent Project

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Meet the Director Esther Leerkes is an assistant professor of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she teaches classes about infant and child development, child assessment, and parenting.  She earned her PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Vermont.  While living in Vermont, Dr. Leerkes helped evaluate the effectiveness of several community agencies that work with children and families.  These included parent education programs, home visiting programs, and programs designed to help teen parents.  Her research interests include how the transition to parenthood affects adults, parent-child interaction, and infant temperament. Her research has been published in journals like Infancy, Journal of Family Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Parenting: Science and Practice, and Infant Behavior and Development and presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies and conferences sponsored by the Society for Research in Child Development. Dr. Leerkes enjoys spending free time with her husband and daughter, reading books, working on home improvement projects, and exploring North Carolina, her new home.