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Sumru Erkut, Ph.D.

Associate Director and Senior Research Scientist

Sumru Erkut is an Associate Director and Senior Research Scientist at WCW where she directs the Postdoctoral Behavioral Research Training on Variations in Child and Adolescent Development funded by the National Institute for Child Health and Development. She joined the Center for Research on Women in 1979 before its partnership with the Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies in 1995 to form the Wellesley Centers for Women.

Dr. Erkut received a BSc. in Social Sciences from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. Her Doctorate is in Social Psychology from Harvard University, Department of Social Relations, which she attended with a Fulbright and an International Studies Fellowship. Before joining the Wellesley Centers for Women she taught at the Middle East Technical University and Boston University and was a research associate of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University.

At the Wellesley Centers for Women her research has encompassed variations in the course of child and adult development due to gender, race/ethnicity, social class, immigration, urbanization, and sexuality. Her research on adults has focused on employment and leadership. She has analyzed data from interviews with diverse women leaders and co-authored the report, Inside Women’s Leadership. She has participated in a collaborative study on barriers to women’s and minorities’ upward mobility under a contract from the U.S. Department of Labor, Glass Ceiling Commission, a gender equity survey of all levels of employees in a large medical center, and a study of success for women and minorities in the sales department of a high technology company. Her most recent work on leadership is a study of women on corporate boards of directors.

Her research on children and adolescents has included directing a research program on Puerto Rican youth development, raising confident and competent girls, the effects of sports on girls’ and boys’ development and sexual behavior, and evaluating youth-serving agencies’ science programs for girls and children of color. Her most recent project on youth development is a study of identity processes among adolescents from mixed-ancestry backgrounds.

Her work in the international arena includes a synthesis of the literature on school-related gender-based violence in developing countries. She has published on a class-based analysis of urban women’s occupational achievement in Turkey. She has explored sexual violence dimensions of the growing crisis in the spread of HIV/AIDS among adolescent girls.

She is a Consulting Editor of Developmental Psychology and an associate editor of Journal of Adolescent Research. She has served on peer review panels for NIH, NSF, and other federal and private funding agencies. Dr. Erkut is a member of the Advisory Board of the Girls Coalition of Greater Boston, Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, and Boston Girls’ Sport and Physical Activity Project. She is a member of Research Advisory Committee of the American Association of University Professors. She is the past president of the Board of Directors of the Friends of American Board Schools in Turkey.

 

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