Roberta Michnick Golinkoff

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph.D., Cornell University, is the Unidel H. Rodney Sharp Professor of Education at the University of Delaware and director of the Child’s Play, Learning, and Development Laboratory. She is also a member of the Departments of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Linguistics and Cognitive Science and has held many awards including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the American Psychological Association’s Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution to Developmental Psychology. In 2017, she was awarded the Society for Research in Child Development’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution award and the next year, she was given the American Educational Research Association’s Outstanding Public Communication of Education Research Award. Her research has been funded by Federal agencies, and the LEGO Foundation. In addition to over 200 journal publications and book chapters, she has authored 16 books and monographs. Her book, Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children (APA Press) reached the New York Times best seller list in Education and her newest book, Making Schools Work: Bringing the Science of Learning to Joyful Classroom Practice, is designed to transform education through the use of playful learning. With the Jacobs Foundation, she is co-founder of the Learning Sciences Exchange, a fellowship program inviting professionals in entertainment, the science of learning, educational policy, and journalism to work together for sharing the science of early childhood with the public. Her project, Playful Learning Landscapes, is a prime example of translational science, with installations in communities based in the science of how children learn, to promote child well-being.