About the Grant
The 2 x 2 Grant for Early Career Scholars (ECS) reflects ISSBD’s commitment to supporting early career developmental scholars from around the world. The “2 x 2” element means that 2 ECS apply together and are located in 2 different countries or regions (ideally different continents, which are majority-world/under-represented countries). The 2 ECS should have complementary research and methodological skills so that they work together in a synergistic way to advance developmental knowledge.
Lifestyle, school readiness, and later academic achievement in Cuba and Cameroon
Yaser Ramirez and Ijang Ngyah
Yaser Ramirez is currently engaged in early childhood developmental science and holds a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Montreal (Canada) under the supervision of PhD. Linda Pagani. His academic background includes a Ph.D. in Educational Sciences from the University of Cienfuegos (Cuba) and a Master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience from the Center for Neurosciences of Cuba. Previously, he served as an Associate Professor at the University of Cienfuegos and an Associate Researcher at the Neurodevelopmental Rehabilitation Center of Cardenas, Cuba. Additionally, he currently holds the position of Secretary General of the Neurodevelopmental Section of the Cuban Society of Neuroscience. He has established international collaborations with various institutions, including the University of Montreal in Canada, Oregon State University in the US, the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, and the University of the National Education Commission, Krakow in Poland. His contributions to the field have been acknowledged with several awards, such as the Fernando Dalmás Fellowship of the Latin American Society of Neuropsychology (SLAN) in 2013, the Provincial Award of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment of Cuba in 2016, and most recently the Early Career Scholar Fellowship of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development in 2022.
Ijang Bih Ngyah-EtchutambeI is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education at the University of Buea, Cameroon. She earned her PhD and an M.Ed in Educational Psychology, a Higher Teacher Training Diploma in Teaching Philosophy and a B.Sc Degree in Sociology and Anthropology. She is passionate about facilitating learning for knowledge transfer, creative skills development and resilience in children and youths. She is a psychologist for skill development and has published several articles in the said domain. She has been engaged in collaborative research on childrearing practices that nurture skills that enhance school readiness. She has been a Professional Development (PD) Fellow with the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development (ISSBD), where she conducted a study on cognitive flexibility principles in teaching and the development of vocational skills in woodwork. As a PD fellow, she engaged in team research on Human Flourishing in the majority world funded by the Templeton World Foundation. She is a postdoc grantee of the Italian MAECI scholarship and is currently a Development Country Fellow with the ISSBD. She loves making people productive and being their best version through appropriate learning and teaching strategies.
Parental Emotion Socialization of Indian, Chinese, and European American families : The Role of Culturally-Embedded Factors
Meingold Chan and Tripti Kathuria
Meingold Chan is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia. She received a PhD in Human Development and Family Science at Ohio State University and an MPhil in Social and Developmental Psychology at the University of Cambridge. Taking a biopsychosocial and multicultural perspective, her research program focuses on the role of familial and cultural contexts on children’s socioemotional development and the biological embedding of these contexts reflected by epigenetics, influencing long-term health. Her work also addresses measurement and methodological issues in psychological and biosocial research. She has published broadly on parenting, emotion socialization, and children’s socioemotional development across high impact factor journals, including Cognitive Development, Emotion, and Journal of Family Psychology.
Meingold’s PhD project focuses on the cultural variations of family emotion socialization and children’s socioemotional development across the United States and China, including Hong Kong and Beijing. Her research takes a deep dive into the role of culturally embedded factors using mixed methods research design and culturally appropriate measures. The ISSBD 2 x 2 grant will support the continuation of her cross-cultural research and allow a comparison of her Chinese data with similar data in India led by Dr. Kathuria under the mentorship of Dr. Wolfgang Friedlmeier.
Tripti Kathuria is a research coordinator at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. She completed her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India. Her research interests are cultural shaping of emotions, emotion regulation, and emotion socialization. She is an ISSBD Early Career Scholar representative (2024-2028). Her collaborative project titled “Parental Emotion Socialization of Indian, Chinese, and European American Families: The Role of Culturally Embedded Factors” has won the ISSBD 2 x 2 for Early Career Scholars grant. This award will support the study involving behavioral observations and interviews with mothers of toddlers to understand how culturally embedded factors contribute to maternal emotion socialization practices and children’s socioemotional outcomes. The project aims to advance the cross-cultural understanding of emotion socialization by highlighting the similarities and specificity in maternal emotion socialization practices across Asian and Western contexts