Professors Uwe Gielen and Sunghun Kim will discuss their new book, Global Changes in Children’s Lives (Cambridge University Press, 2019), comparing the nature of childhood and adolescence in three representative societies differing in their subsistence activities. The societies include Tibetan nomadic pastoralists, traditional farmers in India, and South Korean students growing up in a digital information society. In addition, Gielen and Kim will trace a variety of intertwined global changes that have led to sharply reduced child mortality rates, lower birthrates, shrinking family sizes, contested gender roles, increased marriage ages, long-term enrollment of children and adolescents in educational institutions, and the formation of culturally mixed identities in places such as Ladakh in India.
Uwe P. Gielen (Ph.D. in Social Psychology, Harvard University) is Professor-Emeritus of Psychology and Executive Director of the Institute for International and Cross-Cultural Psychology at St. Francis College, New York. His work centers on cross-cultural and international psychology, Chinese American immigrant youth, international family psychology, and moral development. Dr. Gielen is the senior editor or coeditor of 28 volumes that have appeared in five languages. They include "Childhood and Adolescence: Cross-Cultural Perspectives and Applications"; "Families in Global Perspective"; and "Toward a Global Psychology." He has served as president of the Society for Cross-Cultural Research, the International Council of Psychologists, and the International Psychology Division of the American Psychology Association.
Sunghun Kim studied Education and Educational Psychology and earned his Ph.D. degree at The University of Texas at Austin with the dissertation, “Exploring Naturalistic Conceptions of ‘a Moral Person’ for South Koreans.” His research interests focus on cultural aspects and their influences on human behaviors in relation to morality, religiosity, education, family dynamic, and developmental outcomes of children and adolescents. Dr. Kim grew up and lived in South Korea before he started his doctoral study in the U.S. Completing the degree course, he also received his post-doctoral training in South Carolina, and then moved to New York to start his career at St. Francis College. Dr. Kim teaches psychology courses such as General, Developmental, and Cross-Cultural Psychology, as well as Psychology of Diversity, plus research methodology courses, for example, Introduction to Psychological Research and Statistical Methods in Psychology.
