The Center for Research on Families (CRF) is excited to announce that the Center will be under new leadership for the upcoming 2015-16 academic year. Dr. Maureen Perry-Jenkins, the current director of CRF, has recently embarked on a year-long fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford. In her stead, Dr. Lynnette Leidy Sievert, professor of anthropology and long-time CRF steering committee member, will serve as interim faculty director through May 2016.

Dr. Sievert says that she is "thrilled" to join the staff at CRF as the Center begins an exciting new year and welcomes a new cohort of seven Family Research Scholars for 2015-16. She envisions family research as "uniquely broad based, ranging from biology to family systems to cultural contexts."

Indeed, Dr. Sievert has played an important leadership role for the CRF Stress Group, one of the Center's long-standing initiatives that encourages multidisciplinary conversations about family research. Along with her directorial responsibilities, she will spearhead this group’s effort to obtain a NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) grant in the upcoming year. In her capacity as CRF’s faculty director, Dr. Sievert will help advance the mission of the Center to foster family research and support student training in family research, while translating and disseminating this research to various public audiences for the greater good.

Dr. Sievert’s own research focuses on age and symptom experiences of menopause, as well as the evolution of menopause and post-reproductive aging across cultures. Her work has been widely published and she is a frequent contributor to both journal articles and media coverage of this topic.