Professor of Communication and Media
Kristen (Kris) Harrison received her PhD in 1997 in communication science with a minor in social and developmental psychology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She is a professor of Communication Studies and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies at the University of Michigan, as well as Head of the Media Psychology Group at the Research Center for Group Dynamics, Institution for Social Research. While at the University of Illinois, she co-founded the Illinois STRONG Kids Program in 2007 and in 2011 extended this research initiative to Michigan. The STRONG Kids Program is a transdisciplinary examination of family and community predictors of early childhood obesity. Professor Harrison collaborates with investigators from communication, human and community development, food science and human nutrition, economics, kinesiology and community health, social work, medicine, and psychology.
In 2012, she joined the University of Michigan’s Momentum Center as a key investigator studying family predictors of infant and early childhood obesity. She is lead author of the 6-Cs model, an ecological cell-to-culture theoretical model designed to help map multi-level influences on social problems (specifically childhood obesity) over the child’s developmental trajectory. Professor Harrison is currently studying media and marketing influences on child dietary intake and preschoolers’ perceptions of healthy meals using a novel child meal schema measure called the Placemat Protocol. This measure uses lifelike food models in a pretend-play paradigm to capture preschoolers’ understanding of “healthy meals” before they can fully articulate it verbally.
