Lauren Roygardner

Dr. Roygardner is an adjunct assistant professor in the psychology program at CUNY SPS, where she typically teaches advanced research methods, atypical development, theories of personality, and risk and resilience in child development. She is also a senior research associate at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families (CCF). 

She has a PhD in Psychology with a focus on developmental psychology and adolescence, along with a Doctoral Certificate in Women & Gender Studies from the CUNY Graduate Center. Her dissertation was entitled: “Embodying Rhythm Nation: Multimodal Hip Hop Dance as a Site for Adolescent Social-Emotional and Political Development.” While at CUNY, she was the recipient of a Writing Fellowship Award from the Institute for Research of the African Diaspora and the Caribbean (IRADAC). She also co-edited the book, See You at the Crossroads: Hip Hop Scholarship at the Intersections – Dialectical Harmony, Ethics, Aesthetics, and Panoply of Voices (Recipient of the 2015 Critics’ Choice Award through the American Education Studies Association).

Dr. Roygardner is trained as a mixed-methods researcher with both quantitative and qualitative experiences and has experience conducting program evaluation, building business intelligence tools, and analyzing U.S. Census survey data. Her research focuses on health policy, child and adolescent development, program evaluation, quality improvement, social-emotional learning and socio-political development in youth, and the use of contemporary art (i.e. hip hop dance) in prevention and intervention.