Dear SEHD Faculty & Staff,
Henry Gonzalez, candidate for the HDFR Assistant Professor position, will be coming to campus on Wednesday, November 9.
His Research Presentation will be at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, November 9 in LSC 1150–flyer to come. More information can be found here.
Brief Bio
Dr. Henry Gonzalez is Postdoctoral Fellow at Arizona State University in the School of
Transborder Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Family Studies and Human Development from the University of Arizona, and his baccalaureate degrees in Psychology and Human Development from the University of California, Davis.
Dr. Gonzalez currently serves as a Student Representative-Elect of the Latino Caucus of the Society for Research in Child Development, and is an incoming Student/New Professional Representative-Elect of the Ethnic Minority Section of the National Council on Family Relations. During his pre-doctoral studies, Dr. Gonzalez was awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship by the National Science Foundation, and was named a Family Strengthening Scholar by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. His research has been published in a variety of outlets, including the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, Family Relations, and Journal of Child and Family Studies.
Having been born and raised in an immigrant enclave inner city “barrio” in East Los Angeles influences Dr. Gonzalez’s research focus on the sociocultural context of immigrant and Latino families. As a first-generation student of immigrant parents from small agrarian villages in southern Mexico, Dr. Gonzalez grew up speaking Spanish at home and learning English at school, which allowed him to help his parents better navigate their social context by helping them learn English. The difficulty his parents experienced motivate Dr. Gonzalez to address the hardships related to immigration-related stressors, including sociocultural and ecologically-valid stressors.
Summary of Research
Dr. Henry Gonzalez’s research interests reflect his commitment to extend family science and human development beyond academic boundaries to tackle pressing social justice issues.
Dr. Gonzalez’s research is specifically aimed at identifying family-based targets for ecologically and developmentally appropriate interventions and policies to promote healthy family relationships and strengthen parent-child bonds in families from disadvantaged communities. Dr. Gonzalez is building a program of research that operates from a general family stress process model and draws from family systems perspectives to identify specific untapped sources of resiliency and strengths among understudied and disadvantaged families, particularly low-income immigrant and Latino families.
One pillar of Dr. Gonzalez’s program of research is the use of strength-based approaches to study complex family relationships and to identify specific sources of strengths that buffer the adverse effects of economic and sociocultural contextual stressors on family relations. Dr. Gonzalez’s future research plans incorporate quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches and use multiple theoretical lenses to capture family and parent-child functioning across different environments.
Dr. Gonzalez is specifically interested in using mixed-method approaches to identify 1) the implications of diverse configurations of family and interpersonal relationships within Latino families for family functioning, 2) the potentially unique parenting and relationship qualities that characterize transborder family relationships among Latino families, 3) the processes of family instability among families with separated and reintegrated fathers, such as incarcerated and deported fathers, 4) family assets and tools, particularly those related to father involvement, to empower youth, families, and communities to bring forth social justice in their schools and neighborhoods, and 5) key processes of resiliency among immigrant Latino families with legal immigration status vulnerabilities that can inform intervention design and implementation. I plan to recruit a team of undergraduate and graduate students in my research.
Henry Gonzalez’s CV.
View his interview schedule here.