Sara Jaffee, Professor of Psychology, is the Class of 1965 Term Professor of Psychology. Jaffee, a developmental psychopathologist, conducts research on children and families experiencing a range of adversities, including poverty, housing insecurity, and violence. She studies the impact of these environments on development across the lifecourse and is interested in factors that support resilience to adversity.

Jaffee also studies whether policies that target structural determinants of health promote positive outcomes for children and families. Her work combines longitudinal, epidemiological methods with experimental and quasi-experimental designs to better understand how risk and protective factors operate in children’s development.