About IHD

The Institute of Human Development (IHD) is an Organized Research Unit (ORU) at UC Berkeley. ORUs provide a supportive infrastructure for interdisciplinary research–to promote research on problems and opportunities that can’t be tackled within any single department or school. Given the central importance of human development to our society, it is fitting that the IHD was one of the first of such institutes established on the UC-Berkeley campus. We are proud of almost 100 years of groundbreaking and methodologically diverse research on human development to understand and support thriving across the lifespan. Please see our history page for more on the longitudinal research studies that engaged families and individuals in scientific discovery across the 20th century, with particular attention to the role of social and economic factors in development.

As we engage with the present and and future of human development, in the context of pressing social, technological, and political shifts, we are committed to:

Cultivating innovative scholarship and training across disciplines and the systems that shape human development to generate actionable solutions that promote the thriving of all infants, children, adolescents, families, and society,
Conducting community-engaged research in human development that brings together the best expertise of Berkeley–including psychology, social sciences, education, public health, social welfare, law, and public policy–with the best expertise of our community and governmental partners on the ground–to promote learning, positive development, and wellbeing across the lifespan.

To learn more about the centers and projects aligned with our mission under the inclusive and cross-disciplinary umbrella of IHD, please visit our Centers, Research Programs & Activities page.

To learn more about our weekly seminar series, please see our Spring 2025 Colloquium Schedule. To receive updates about our seminars, please email us at ihd@berkeley.edu and request to be added to our mailing list.