Maria was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor effective August, 2025!
Maria LaRusso is a developmental psychologist and interdisciplinary scholar with research that integrates approaches from human development, psychology, health, education, and anthropology. However, her work has been most profoundly shaped by her training in Human Development, particularly the fundamental view of child and adolescent development as being shaped through interactions between the individual and their immediate contexts (family, school, community, etc.) which are nested within other systems that include cultural, economic, and political factors, as well as sociohistorical circumstances. From her experience as a child and family therapist, she also brings a clinical perspective to her research. For instance, her training in structural family therapy solidified her approach to understanding pathology and well-being as not laying within the individual, but within the interrelated “systems” that make up one’s world.
After completing a doctorate in Human Development and Psychology at Harvard University, Maria continued her training at the University of Pennsylvania and New York University with a Postdoctoral Education Research Training (PERT) Fellowship, which was created through a joint effort of the American Psychological Association and the Institute of Education Sciences to bring intervention research and experimental methods from psychology to educational settings. Her subsequent research focused on a range of social-emotional, behavioral, and risk prevention programs in schools, aiming to understand how interventions impact individuals and contexts and how individuals and contexts impact intervention delivery and success.
Maria’s more recent research is driven by the urgent need to address significant declines in youth well-being and mental health over the past decade. In her current projects, she investigates factors contributing to these declines, investigating multiple perspectives within and across ecological contexts (e.g., families, teachers and school staff, pediatricians, and mental health professionals). In the context of rising chronic health conditions among youth, she has also conducted several studies with families in the U.S. and internationally to uncover how inadequate care and support for children with complex or poorly understood conditions, particularly with psychiatric symptoms (PANS/PANDAS), have resulted in significant developmental disruptions. Taking an ecological approach, this research focuses on identifying how school and community supports can help children experience less severe developmental losses and continue to reach their full potential.
She is also working on new interventions that aim to reduce stress and improve well-being and mental health among adolescents, with an emphasis on children’s rights to healthy development. In particular, she recently completed two studies of a program for adolescents that bridges mindfulness practices with critical consciousness of the factors harming youth well-being, while also empowering them to resist and act against these factors, by adopting healthier habits (e.g., sleep, balanced technology use, physical activity) and engaging in social activism. The program was piloted in both the United States and Colombia, where her research has been supported by two Fulbright awards.
Outside of work, Maria enjoys music, Pilates, reading, meditating, and being in nature (in no particular order, but definitely after her morning cappuccino). Most of all, she enjoys spending time and traveling the world with her husband (also a professor) and their two daughters.