Jenna Finch

Current Position: 

Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Jenna Finch was a doctoral candidate in Developmental and Psychological Sciences at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Mathematics (Georgetown University) and will complete her Ph.D. in 2018. Jenna uses complex quantitative methods to explore how home and school contexts shape the development of children’s self-regulation skills. She is particularly interested in how parents and teachers can promote the resilience of socioeconomically-disadvantaged children. Her research has been published in journals such as Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Developmental Psychology, The Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, and AERA Open.

Jenna’s work focuses on 1) how early experiences of adversity are linked to children’s self-regulation skills, (2) how interactions with parents, teachers, and peers can support self-regulation development, and (3) how home and school experiences interact with each other to influence children’s developmental trajectories. Her research is interdisciplinary in nature, combining insights from smaller-scale developmental lab studies with secondary data analysis of nationally-representative samples to bring developmental science to bear on policy-relevant questions.