Email: silvana.freire@nyu.edu
Program: Silvana Freire
Year Entered Program: 2022
Research Interests: Child development, quality interactions, family engagement, family research, social support
Principal Advisor(s): Dr. Hirokazu Yoshikawa
Research Description/Bio: Silvana is a Ph.D. candidate and IES PIRT fellow in the Applied Psychology department. Her research examines early childhood development and family engagement, with a focus on the socioenvironmental factors that shape maternal well being and parenting among mothers with low income, particularly in Latino and immigrant communities. She is interested in how caregiving contexts, from household stressors to broader systems of support, influence caregiver well being, parent child interactions and children's developmental trajectories. Silvana draws on quantitative methods, including psychometrics, causal inference, and person centered analysis, alongside qualitative approaches, and is ultimately interested in designing and evaluating interventions and policies that strengthen caregiving systems for families raising young children.
During her Ph.D., Silvana has worked with Dr. Hiro Yoshikawa on Baby's First Years, a randomized controlled trial of an unconditional cash transfer for mothers with low income during their child's first six years, where her dissertation examines how socioenvironmental stressors relate to maternal well being and parenting practices at child age six. She has also examined social support, father engagement, and maternal mental health in research in the U.S. and abroad. Through her practicum, she partnered with a Head Start center in New York City to explore teachers' and caregivers' experiences supporting children's learning and engagement. Prior to NYU, she worked as an early childhood and education consultant at the Inter American Development Bank and as a research analyst at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. She holds a B.A. in psychology from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru and an M.A. in international education policy analysis from Stanford University's Graduate School of Education.