Featured Video
Dr. Esther J. Calzada is the Norma and Clay Leben Professor in Child and Family Behavioral Health and Associate Dean for Research at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work. She received her B.A. from Duke University and her Ph.D. from the University of Florida.
Dr. Calzada is a clinical child psychologist with expertise in parenting and early childhood development in Latinx and other minoritized families. She has a strong commitment to scientific equity, working to both elucidate and counter systemic injustices (e.g., race-based discrimination) that undermine healthy development, and recognize and leverage factors that promote (e.g., ethnic identity) the well-being of young children. Ultimately, her program of research aims to reduce disparities in academic achievement, behavior problems, and socio-emotional problems. Her work has been funded by the National Institute of Health, the U.S. Department of Education, and the National Science Foundation and is published regularly in psychology, educational and medical journals.
Dr. Calzada holds current faculty affiliate positions in the Population Research Center and the LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, as well as the Department of Mexican American and Latino/a Studies, at UT Austin. Previously, she served as Associate Dean for Equity and Inclusion at the Steve Hicks School of Social work and as the Director of the Texas Center for Equity Promotion in the College of Education. She is also a Research Scientist with the Morris L. Lichenstein, Jr. Medical Research Foundation. She currently serves on the Governing Council for the Society for Research in Child Development and as a Panel Member for the Social Psychology, Personality and Interpersonal Processes Study Section, Risk, Prevention and Health Behavior Integrated Review Group at the National Institutes of Health.
Professional Interests
Parenting, early childhood development and ethnic identity, Latinx families, scientific equity
Posts
- To fear critical race theory in schools underestimates students
- Want better schools? Teach compassion
- From zero tolerance to zero harm for immigrant families
- Why Latino parents should embrace race
- We must stop the criminalization of mental illness in schools
- Parent shaming videos are a short-term solution to bad behavior
Research
- Societal stressors, adaptive factors, and developmental timing: Influences on Latinx mental health from early childhood through young adulthood. (2029)
- A Culturally Informed Model Linking Physiological Stress Regulation and Behavioral and Academic Adjustment in Latinx Children (2027)
- Implementing ParentCorps in Corpus Christi Independent School District (2024)
- The PLAY Project : Promoting Ethnic-Racial Identity in Young Children (2024)
- Linking community and family characteristics to adolescent adjustment (2022)
- Latino students academic achievement: The role of early-childhood family and school characteristics (2019)
- A lifespan conceptual model of ethnic/racial identity (2018)
- Mexican-American parenting and early childhood development (2017)
- Family and school contexts as predictors of early childhood Latino development (2015)