Family Lives research team
As psychologists and educators , we are involved in research activities, mental health services, teacher preparation programs, and counseling services. We would like to better understand the perspectives of parents in samesex relationships, particularly in the Italian context.
We are committed to reporting their views and experiences with respect and professionalism in order to improve the communication between families and service providers, policy makers, teachers.
We consider same-sex parenthood an opportunity for better understanding parenthood at large.
Federica de Cordova
I am a social psychologist, Assistant Professor at University of Verona where I teach “Transcultural Psychology”. My research focuses on identity and culture.
I am particularly interested in cultural and social norms constrain in self-definition in specific contexts and how such constrains affect both individuals who meet the rules and the ones who transgress them. My investigations deepen the process of negotiation between the individual and collective level in order to gain agency in defining identities and relationships. I developed my research mostly within minority groups especially in relationship with health care institutions.
I am primarily oriented towards qualitative methods (in depth interviews, case studies, focus group, ethnographies).
My research topic are: Culture and healing systems; Trauma, memory and agency; Self construction in second generation youth; Cultural linguistic mediation in clinical psychology; Same sex parenthood.
Chiara Sità
I am a researcher in Education at the University of Verona. My research is particularly concerned with the relationship between professionals and parents in parent support services, considering parent support as a context of social practice where some fundamental processes occur. My theoretical framework refers to an ecological perspective that sees parenthood as a construction which is not merely related to individual developmental dynamics, but is connected with the cultural and institutional environment. The relationship between parents and professionals, through several actions, such as information, counseling, training, self-help, contributes to parental identity negotiation, mothers’ and fathers’ role construction, and parents’ ideas on parenting.
The study of professionals’ perspectives and visions on parent support has allowed me to focus on the importance of investigating the complex interactions between individual paths and the world outside the family group at a macro and meso level considering, among other things, cultures and models of parenting and family policies. I study parent support programs as contexts where macro and micro meet and where the different actors’ visions are mutually influenced. My research topics: parent support in child protection; the role of professionals in parent-toddler playgroups; family foster care from the children’s point of view; educators and work engagement; same-sex parents’ experience and relation with professionals.
Giulia Selmi
I got my Ph.D. in sociology and social research at the University of Trento in 2010, I’ve been contract lecturer of sociology of the family at the University of Bologna since 2015 and now I’m post-doc research fellow at the University of Verona.
I’m interested in sociology of gender differences, sexualities and the body since my Ph.D. research and in the last years I worked on LGBT couples and family by exploring the relationships among personal experiences, cultural models and the legal framework (or lack thereof). Moreover, I have a true passion for the world of education as a privileged point of view to explore social transformations and, above all, as a field where is actually possible to promote inclusion, equality and access to full citizenship.
Susan Holloway
Susan Holloway is a professor in the Human Development and Education Program in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley.
Throughout her career she has been interested in the ways that sociocultural processes shape schooling and family life in the US and abroad. As a doctoral student, she participated in one of the earliest studies of academic socialization in Japan and the US, directed by Professors Hiroshi Azuma, Robert Hess, and Keiko Kashiwagi. During that period she also engaged in research in Mexico that compared the childrearing goals and expectations of mothers and preschool teachers.
These projects sparked her interest in the ways in which broad cultural models are instantiated in the micro-structural features of home and school. To explore these issues, she conducted a longitudinal comparative study of parenting and social class in Japan and the US (Moms Project).
With colleagues Janine Bempechat and Jin Li, she then conducted a second longitudinal study of family, social class, and schooling among families of ninth graders in the US, the Russian Federation,and England (Learning Beliefs Project). This work highlighted the crucial role of families in promoting student engagement, particularly in under-resourced school settings. Dr. Holloway has focused on learning about the ways that Latino parents and children absorb, adapt, and/or resist cultural models of education and family life. With Drs. Irenka Dominguez-Pareto and Shana Cohen, she conducted a study of parenting and advocacy in families with a child who has an intellectual disability (WEST project).
In recent years, much of Holloway’s work has focused directly on the ways in which the microstructural features of the home and other proximal institutions either support or undermine women’s sense of confidence in their own parenting capabilities. For instance, she and colleague Dr. Sawako Suzuki are currently validating a measure of parenting self-efficacy in the US, China, Japan, and Korea (BPSE project).
Irenka Dominguez-Pareto
My research brings an interdisciplinary perspective to the study of human development, families, and education.
My dissertation investigated the discourse, practice, and experiences of educational advocacy by Spanish-speaking families with children with disabilities in the U.S. This work offers an empirically rooted examination of parental involvement policy as it affects the lived-experiences of immigrant families.
My research interests are situated at the intersection of critical education studies, family & gender studies, cultural psychology, sociology, and anthropology to explore how families of non-dominant groups in the U.S. navigate educational and parenting policies, ideologies, and discourses that might place them at a disadvantage.
My research brings an interdisciplinary perspective to the study of human development, families, and education.
My dissertation investigated the discourse, practice, and experiences of educational advocacy by Spanish-speaking families with children with disabilities in the U.S. This work offers an empirically rooted examination of parental involvement policy as it affects the lived-experiences of immigrant families. My research interests are situated at the intersection of critical education studies, family & gender studies, cultural psychology, sociology, and anthropology to explore how families of non-dominant groups in the U.S. navigate educational and parenting policies, ideologies, and discourses that might place them at a disadvantage.
I have been part of the team that designed and conducted the WEST study and I am currently a Co-PI on the Family Lives project.