Dr. Sharon Wolf studies the social and environmental determinants of child development and inequalities, focusing on disadvantaged populations in the United States and in low-income countries. Shaped by her training in applied developmental and community psychology, Dr. Wolf applies a developmental-ecological framework to study how social contexts affect children’s academic and behavioral development and produce inequality.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn GSE, Dr. Wolf was a postdoctoral research scientist at the Global TIES for Children research center at New York University and a National Poverty Fellow with the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was in residence at the US Department of Health and Human Services. She received her Ph.D. in Applied Psychology with a concentration in Quantitative Analysis from NYU. Dr. Wolf was a recipient of the American Psychological Foundation Elizabeth Munsterberg Koppitz Graduate Fellowship in Child Psychology, and the Institute of Education Sciences Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training Fellowship.