Lisa Berlin, PhD

Lisa Berlin is the Alison L. Richman Professor of Children and Families at the University of Maryland School of Social Work.

Professor Berlin’s research focuses on early child-caregiver attachment as well as programs and policies to support early parenting and child development. Dr. Berlin has been conducting attachment and intervention research for over 20 years across multiple disciplines including human development, psychology, social work, and public health. A major thrust of Dr. Berlin’s research agenda concerns the extent to which attachment-based programs can add value to publicly funded services designed to support early parenting and child development. 

Currently, Dr. Berlin directs Compañeros en la Salud de los Niños/Partners in Children's Health (CSN) in collaboration with Drs. Natalie Slopen of the Harvard School of Public Health and Tania Caballero of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Centro SOL (Salud/Health and Opportunity for Latinos). Funded by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, the CSN study is a 5-year randomized trial testing the effects of an attachment-based parenting program on toddler’s emerging health outcomes in low-income Latino families in Baltimore. 

Dr. Berlin is the also editor of the Society for Research in Child Development Social Policy Report, a journal dedicated to leveraging child and family research to support evidence-based policy development. 

Dr. Berlin earned her MS and PhD in Human Development and Family Studies from the Pennsylvania State University, and her BA in Psychology from Barnard College. 

Lisa Berlin, PhD

Alison L. Richman Professor of Children and Families

University of Maryland School of Social Work