Black Girlhood Unfolded
A Living Archive of Puberty, Identity, and Becoming
A dual-purpose digital platform that integrates storytelling, research translation, and ethical data collection to support Black girls during puberty. Through parallel modules delivered on a public community resource site and a secure research platform, the project simultaneously shifts adult interpretations, amplifies girls’ voices, and advances developmentally and culturally grounded science without placing the burden of change on the girls themselves. The platform employs a comprehensive data management and confidentiality plan that prioritizes participant safety, privacy, and dignity. Through structural separation of public and secure components, rigorous data security practices, and ethical handling of narrative and creative data, the project ensures that Black girls’ stories are protected while contributing to rigorous, culturally grounded research.
Teachers and Puberty Study
Adapting to pubertal changes is particularly difficult for girls who negotiate an early transition in a stressful social environment. This study examines whether teachers overtax capacities or underestimate the academic potential of early (or late) developing girls because they physically look older (or younger) than their chronological age suggests. In this study, photo vignettes describing girls in various academic and behavioral scenarios are given to practicing elementary school teachers to assess their academic and behavioral expectations of each girl.
Completed Projects
Identity Exploration During Puberty
This study aims to explore how Black, White, and Biracial (Black and White) girls make meaning of their multiple social identities and changing bodies and variations in these meanings based on pubertal timing and ethnic-racial group. Using a mixed-method design, we examine (a) the importance and meaning that girls ascribe to their physical development, (b) the importance and meaning that girls ascribe to their ethnicity-race and gender identities; (c) variation in these puberty qualities and identity constructs as a function of girls pubertal timing and ethnic-racial group; and (d) whether the importance of puberty qualities and identity predicts its content meaning.
Friends and Couples Study 
Peer networks are important social settings for a better understanding of the significance of romantic involvement in sexual development and individual well-being. This study examines whether adolescent girls with different levels of involvement in romantic relationships and different qualities of these relationships in early, middle, or late adolescence have different interactions with their close friends and peer social network structures. In this study, adolescent females, close friends, and romantic partners complete measures about their dating history, sexual activities, and peer network. Observational data is also obtained to rate the girls’ behavior toward their close friend and romantic partner and their close friend and romantic partner’s behavior toward them.
Family Dyad Study
Research has implicated pubertal development as an important catalyst for the changes in parent-child relationships during early adolescence. Pubertal development is a salient individual change for the adolescent experiencing it and his/her family members. While the familial response to pubertal growth is likely to shape the adolescents’ experience of it, the family’s response may also contribute to the shifts in family relations during this developmental period. This study investigates the links between the timing of pubertal development and a number of aspects of the parent-child relationship. Observational and qualitative data are obtained to examine transformations in parent-child relationships at puberty.
