Research by the Director


Tomoe Kanaya, Ph.D. - Dr. Kanaya is a developmental psychologist whose research interest lies in the intersection of child development and public policy, with a primary focus on educational policy.  Her previous research has examined the use (and misuse) of IQ scores on special education diagnoses and her current work is focusing on the impact of occupational and familial factors on young children’s language and memory development.

Professor Kanaya's work has garnered awards from the American Psychological Association, the American Education Research Association, the Spencer Foundation, and the Haynes Foundation.  Her research has also been covered in various national and international media outlets including The New Yorker, the Austrialian Broadcasting Company, ABC news, and Science Daily.

Select Publications:
“Are all IQ scores created equal? The differential costs of IQ cut-off scores for at-risk children.” Published in Child Development Perspectives.

“Believing is seeing: How rumors can engender false memories in preschoolers,” published in Psychological Science.

“Developing childhood proclivities into adult competencies: The overlooked multiplier effect,” published in Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise (Cambridge University Press).

“Psychological control and autonomy granting: Opposite ends of a continuum or distinct constructs?,” published in Journal of Research on Adolescence.

Faculty Research


Heather Antecol, Ph.D. - Dr. Antecol is the Boswell Professor of Economics and Chair of the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance. She served as the Director of the Berger Institute from 2007-2012. She has published papers on various aspects of labor economics, including youth outcomes, immigration, discrimination, and sexual harassment in the U.S. military and federal government. Her recent work examined whether women (particularly highly educated women) are more likely than their male counterparts to exit the labor market for family responsibilities (i.e., child care and elder care).

Select Publications:
"The Opt-Out Revolution: Recent Trends in Female Labor Supply," published in Research in Labor Economics.

"The Sexual Harassment of Female Active-Duty Personnel: Effects on Job Satisfaction and Intentions to Remain in the Military," published in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.

William Ascher, Ph.D. - Dr. Ascher is Donald C. McKenna Professor of Government and Economics with interests in public policy and political economy. He has contributed reports for the World Bank and the UN Research Institute for Social Development on the approaches to channeling income resource wealth into such social programs as health care and education, especially through conditional cash transfer programs. He has also done research on Latin American and Southeast Asian policies on poverty alleviation.

Select Publication:
Bringing in the Future: Strategies for Farsightedness and Sustainability in Developing Countries (University of Chicago Press)

Audrey Bilger, Ph.D. - Dr. Bilger is Professor of Literature focusing on 18th-Century Humor & Satire, Early Women Writers, LGBT studies, and feminism. Her latest work examines the intertwined stories of female authorship and culture in England and America and considers the scope of Jane Austen's influence.  Her work uncovers issues that concern the role of women as professional authors, tensions and synergies between authorship and family obligations, and the subject matter of marriage and the family.

Select Publication:
Here Come the Brides! Reflections on Lesbian Love and Marriage

David Bjerk, Ph.D. - Dr. Bjerk is the Russell Bock Associate Professor of Public Economics. His research focuses on crime and the criminal justice system, as well as issues of race and gender in the labor market.

Select Publication:
"Glass Ceilings or Sticky Floors? Statistical Discrimination in a Dynamic Model of Promotion and Hiring,” published in The Economic Journal


Kathleen Brown, Ph.D. - Dr. Brown is the Faculty Student Research Coordinator for the Berger Institute. She assists with student recruitment and directs the research of Psychology students who are employed as Research Assistants with the Berger Institute on projects related to work and family. Her research interests lie in the area of public policy issues in applied developmental science, including early childhood education, universal kindergarten, family leave, and No Child Left Behind and standardized testing. She joined the faculty of Claremont McKenna College in 1999.

Lisa Cody, Ph.D. - Dr. Cody is a cultural historian of Britain and France with a research focus on gender, family, medicine and the professions in 18th-century Britain. She is particularly interested in how women have combined their identities as family members with larger aspirations in a period and place in which few women were able to have "professional" identities.


Select Publications:
Divided We Stand: Divorce and Female Independence in the Age of the American Revolution (forthcoming)

Birthing the Nation:  Sex, Science and the Conception of Eighteenth-Century Britons (Oxford University Press).

Diane Halpern, Ph.D. - Dr. Halpern is Trustee Professor of Psychology & Roberts Fellow and served as the original director of the Berger Institute from 2002-2008. Her interests are loosely rooted in human cognition, sex differences in cognitive abilities, critical thinking, using the principles of cognitive psychology to enhance teaching and learning, and work and family interactions.

Select Publications:
From Work-Family Balance to Work-Family Interaction: Changing the Metaphor (Routledge)

"The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling," published in Science


Wei-Chin Hwang, Ph.D. - Dr. Hwang is Associate Professor of Psychology at CMC. His research focuses on understanding and reducing mental health disparities, psychotherapy process and outcomes, improving therapist cultural competency and effectiveness when working with people from different backgrounds, and developing models and frameworks for culturally adapting therapy for ethnic minorities. He is a licensed clinical psychologist and has an independent practice in Pasadena and Claremont, California.

Select Publication:
Hwang, W., Wood, J. J., & Fujimoto, K. “Acculturative Family Distancing (AFD) and depression in Chinese American Families,” published in Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.


Amy Kind, Ph.D. -  Dr. Kind is Chair of the Department of Philosophy. She teaches classes in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and logic.  Recently, she has examined the moral acceptability of lying to your children.

Select Publication:
“Creative Mothering: Lies and the Lying Mothers Who tell Them,” published in Motherhood: The Birth of Wisdom in the Philosophy for Everyone (Wiley-Blackwell).


Nita Kumar, Ph.D. - Dr. Kumar isa Professor of history and studies families and education in India.

Select Publication:
The Politics of Gender, Community, and Modernity: Essays on Education in India (Oxford University Press).

Frederick R. Lynch, Ph.D. - Dr. Lynch is Associate Professor of Government and specializes in workforce diversity management, organization of health care, inequality and public policy, political and social movements, juvenile delinquency and public policy.

Select Publication:
One Nation Under AARP:  The Fight for Medicare, Social Security, and America's Future (University of California Press).

Serkan Ozbeklik, Ph.D. - Dr. Ozbeklik is Assistant Prof. of Economics with interest in labor economic and applied econometrics.  Recently, he has explored the potential causes that have been recognized to contribute the changing trends associated with out-of-wedlock childbearing in the late 1960s and 1970s.


Oana Tocoian, Ph.D. - Dr. Tocoian is an Assistant Professor of Economics, with an interest in gender and household economics, as part of a broader applied microeconomics research agenda.  Currently, she is currently examining whether men’s increased involvement in the household and women’s higher presence in the workplace over the past few decades has diminished the gender gap in entrepreneurship.