Dr. Lilly Shanahan received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies, with a minor in Statistics from the Pennsylvania State University. For her doctoral work, she conducted research on the development of siblings’ family relationships and adjustment during middle childhood and adolescence. In 2004, she began a NICHD post-doctoral fellowship at the Centers for Developmental Science at UNC-Chapel Hill and Developmental Epidemiology at Duke. Dr. Shanahan is currently an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she works at the interface of developmental and clinical psychology, while maintaining her active collaborations with her colleagues at the Center for Developmental Epidemiology.

        Dr. Shanahan’s research focuses on psychosocial risk factors and the development of psychopathology. Using the Great Smoky Mountains and the Caring for Children in the Community studies, she and her collaborators take a variety of methodological approaches to examine linear, configurational, cumulative, and dynamic contributions of a range of psychosocial risk factors to common disorders in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. Together with her collaborators, she also examines how disorders develop over time and how they co-vary longitudinally with one another. She is also interested in developmental heterogeneity and biopsychosocial bases of depression. Dr. Shanahan’s interests in gender differences and longitudinal, family-based research methods permeate all of her work.