Gigliana Melzi

Gigliana Melzi

New York University, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development

Associate Professor of Applied Psychology

Phone: 998 9023
Email: gigliana.melzi@nyu.edu

• Applied Psychology
• Psychological Development

Gigliana Melzi is an Associate Professor of Applied Psychology and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Applied Psychology at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, & Human Development. Dr. Melzi was born and raised in Lima, Peru. She came to the United States in 1985 to pursue her undergraduate degree at Clark University, where she double-majored in Spanish Literature and Psychology. She continued her studies in developmental psychology, focusing on language development, at Boston University, where she obtained her Ph.D. in 1998.  Dr. Melzi’s research has examined the language development and literacy experiences of Spanish-speaking children within and outside of the United States. In one line of work, she has investigated through qualitative methodologies the daily literacy activities of immigrant parents and their impact on children’s school performance. In a second line of research, Dr. Melzi has conducted studies on various discourse and linguistic features of Spanish-speaking mother-child dyads from non-immigrant and immigrant Latin American families across various socio-economic groups, including most recently, middle-class Brazilian mothers from Porto Alegre.

Dr. Melzi’s research has been published in a number of journals including: Journal of Child Language, Discourse Processes, First Language, Narrative Inquiry, Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, Journal of Personality, Journal of the National Reading Conference, Research in the Teaching of English, and the NHSA Dialog: A Research-to-Practice Journal for the Early Intervention Field. In addition she has published an IRA/NRC monograph entitled What should we expect of family literacy? Experiences of Latino children whose parents participate in an intergenerational literacy project, as well as various chapters on Latino children’s early literacy experiences. Her most recent publication is a book entitled Spanish Language Narration and Literacy published by Cambridge University Press.