{"id":4,"date":"2011-09-12T19:38:19","date_gmt":"2011-09-12T19:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/perkins\/about-me\/"},"modified":"2022-10-14T05:39:04","modified_gmt":"2022-10-14T10:39:04","slug":"about-me","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/perkins\/about-me\/","title":{"rendered":"About Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doug Perkins grew up outside Washington, DC, in Prince George’s County, Maryland. He graduated from Swarthmore College in 1980 with a psychology major and thesis on “The prevention of social inequality: A community mental health approach” (advised by Kenneth Gergen) and a sociology & anthropology minor (advised by Steve Piker). He then worked as a psychiatric counselor-trainee at Devereux Foundation’s Career House in Devon, PA. For his 1985 Master’s thesis in Community Psychology at NYU, he conducted an evaluation of an Interpersonal Problem-Solving primary prevention program in Westchester County elementary schools<\/a>. His doctoral project, which won the 1991\u00a0Society for Community Research & Action<\/a> Best Dissertation Award, was a multi-method study of citizen participation in block associations in Brooklyn and Queens, New York City<\/a>. While completing his Ph.D., he taught undergraduate community psychology at NYU (1984), was\u00a0Associate Research Director at\u00a0Citizens Committee for New York City<\/a> (1985-86)\u00a0and taught\u00a0Criminal Justice at Temple University<\/a> (1986-89) while he directed an NIMH-funded study of crime, fear, and mental health in 50 Baltimore city neighborhoods. His first tenure-track job was in Environment & Behavior and\u00a0Family & Consumer Studies at the University of Utah<\/a> (1989-2000). He then moved to Vanderbilt University<\/a> to become the founding Director of the Ph.D. Program in Community Research & Action<\/a>\u00a0and Director of Graduate Studies (2000-2004, 2014-2019) and of Undergraduate Honors (2016-present) for the\u00a0Department of Human and Organizational Development<\/a> at\u00a0Peabody College<\/a>, where he remains. He is a Fellow of the\u00a0Society for Community Research & Action<\/a> and has been SCRA liaison to the\u00a0Community Development Society<\/a>, the\u00a0Environmental Design Research Association<\/a>, and the\u00a0Urban Affairs Association<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Perkins founded and directed the Center for Community Studies<\/a><\/strong>which was launched at the 2004 Interdisciplinary Community Research Working Conference held at\u00a0Peabody\u00a0College (published as a\u00a0special issue of the\u00a0American Journal of Community Psychology<\/em> on Community-based Interdisciplinary Research<\/a>). Perkins stepped down as CCS Director in\u00a02008 in order to develop field schools and other international collaborations and the Center closed in 2011.<\/p>\n

His major ongoing research involves the Global Development of Applied Community Studies project<\/a>, which\u00a0grew out of many international collaborations over 20+ years. After his first sabbatical in Australia in 1998 and delivering the\u00a0keynote address at international conferences in Tazmania<\/a> that year, in Padova, Italy, in 2003<\/a> and the first ever International Conference on Community Psychology (ICCP)<\/a> in\u00a0San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 2006<\/a>, much of Perkins’ research and teaching has become internationally focused, with visiting professorships in Padova, Italy (2006, 2009, 2013 & 2016), Magdeburg, Germany (2004), and Nanjing, Yangzhou & Shanghai, China (2013) and again at East China Normal University in Shanghai in 2017. \u00a0He directed Peabody College’s Fieldschool in Intercultural Education and Research<\/a> in Guangxi, China, in 2007<\/a> and in Cape Town, South Africa in 2012<\/a>. In October 2018, Perkins gave a series of\u00a0invited addresses\u00a0at Universidad Central de Chile and the 7th International Conference on Community Psychology in Santiago, Chile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doug Perkins grew up outside Washington, DC, in Prince George’s County, Maryland. He graduated from Swarthmore College in 1980 with a psychology major and thesis on “The prevention of social inequality: A community mental health approach” (advised by Kenneth Gergen) and a sociology & anthropology minor (advised by Steve Piker). He then worked as a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/perkins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/perkins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/perkins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/perkins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/perkins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/perkins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":728,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/perkins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4\/revisions\/728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/perkins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/perkins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}