ISSBD 2×2 Grant for Early Career Scholars (ECS): 2026 Awardees
The ISSBD 2×2 Grant for Early Career Scholars (ECS) reflects the Society’s commitment to supporting emerging developmental researchers worldwide. The “2×2” model brings together two ECS from different countries or regions—ideally spanning continents and focusing on majority-world or underrepresented contexts. These scholars collaborate by leveraging their complementary research and methodological skills, fostering a synergistic approach to advancing developmental knowledge.
The 2026 awardees exemplify this vision, engaging in innovative research that contributes to the field of developmental science while strengthening global academic partnerships.
Meet this year’s awardees below.
Alp Aytuglu and Jingyi Wang
Project
Readiness for Parenthood in China and Türkiye: Links to Early Family Functioning and Health
The transition to parenthood is a transformative stage in the life course, bringing joy, excitement, and opportunities for personal growth. Many first-time parents, however, also experience uncertainty and concerns about whether they are ready to take on new caregiving roles. Despite growing interest in parental readiness, most evidence on how readiness develops—and why it matters—comes from Western contexts, leaving substantial gaps in our understanding of readiness for parenthood in the majority world, where parental norms and support systems may differ.
These gaps are particularly salient for expectant fathers, whose experiences remain underexamined relative to those of mothers despite clear evidence of their contributions to child development and family functioning. To address these gaps, this project collects parallel data from first-time expectant father–mother dyads in China and Türkiye—two majority-world contexts in which close family ties play a particularly salient role in parenting but differ in socio-cultural histories and parenting norms.
The project examines multiple dimensions of prenatal readiness for parenthood and their associations with prenatal and early postnatal family interactions and health. It also investigates whether cultural factors moderate these associations, highlighting both shared and culturally specific pathways that shape early family functioning in China and Türkiye.
Dr. Alp Aytuglu, PhD
Dr. Alp Aytuglu is a postdoctoral scholar in Biobehavioral Health at The Pennsylvania State University. He received his PhD in Human Development and Family Science from the University of Georgia. Alp’s research centers on the transition to parenthood, with a particular focus on the experiences of first-time fathers, early father–child interactions, and family systems processes. Using longitudinal designs, his work examines how readiness for parenthood, interparental dynamics, and biobehavioral synchrony within child–father–mother triads are linked to children’s socioemotional development and biological health. Alp’s research integrates developmental and family systems perspectives with quantitative methods to study early parenting and family functioning across diverse socio-cultural contexts.
Institutional Affiliation:
Department of Biobehavioral Health, The Pennsylvania State University
Relevant Link:
LinkedIn profile
Dr. Jingyi Wang
Dr. Jingyi Wang is an assistant professor in Psychology in the Division of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She received her PhD in Developmental Psychology from The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on family as the central context for children’s social-emotional development, with a specific emphasis on understanding fathers’ roles as parents and coparents. She is especially interested in investigating family relationships and functioning in families that face disadvantages and discrimination. She seeks to explore family functioning patterns, identify protective family relationships and processes for child development, and examine mechanisms and applications of protective factors.
Institutional Affiliation:
Division of Social Science, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Relevant Link:
Faculty page
Yixin Tang and Njimeleki Anthony Molesy
Project
Sibling Dynamics and Loneliness Among Adolescents in Germany and Cameroon
Loneliness, a pervasive and distressing experience of disconnection from others, has become a major public health concern. It undermines cognitive, emotional, and behavioural functioning, increases risks for mental and physical illness, and is associated with premature mortality.
Adolescence represents a particularly sensitive developmental period for loneliness, marked by heightened social needs and socio-emotional reorganization in which peer acceptance and belonging become increasingly central. Persistent loneliness during this stage can disrupt socio-cognitive development and lead to long-term educational, occupational, and health consequences.
This project provides one of the first cross-cultural, intensive longitudinal investigations of sibling relationships and adolescent loneliness. This is crucial as siblings are among the earliest and most enduring social relationships and constitute a key yet understudied social context for adolescent socio-emotional development. By embedding a daily diary design within a cross-cultural comparison, the study examines how day-to-day sibling interactions are associated with fluctuations in adolescents’ loneliness and whether these associations differ across cultural and family contexts.
Dr. Yixin Tang
Dr. Yixin Tang is a postdoctoral researcher at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, where she works as part of the Lonely-EU Project and investigates the socioeconomic correlates of loneliness across Europe. She completed her PhD in Developmental Psychology at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, where her doctoral thesis examined the origins and manifestations of children’s self-esteem from a cross-cultural perspective. Her research investigates dynamic, multilevel processes through which personal characteristics and social contexts jointly shape children’s and adolescents’ socio-emotional development across cultures. With support from the ISSBD 2×2 Grant under the mentorship of Prof. Dr. Sander Thomaes, she will collaborate with Dr. Njimeleki Anthony Molesy to study sibling dynamics and loneliness in Cameroon and Germany, combining daily diary methods with cross-cultural comparative designs. This work will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of whether and how sibling relationships can serve as a protective resource against loneliness, with implications for developmental theory and for interventions aimed at supporting adolescents across cultural contexts.
Affiliation: Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
Dr. Njimeleki Anthony Molesy
Dr. Njimeleki Anthony Molesy obtained his PhD in Educational Psychology in the year 2020 from the University of Buea, Cameroon. He is currently a lecturer in the Department of Educational Psychology from the Faculty of Education in the same university. His research area of interest is focused on adolescent development with specific interest in socio-emotional and cultural development. This expands to include issues related to their social interaction (within family and school milieu) which affects their psychosocial, educational and emotional wellbeing. He has published several articles in this regard and continues to engage in research endeavours to contribute to knowledge and understanding of these issues. The ISSBD 2×2 Grant under the mentorship of Prof. Dr. Sander Thomaes and collaboration with Dr. Yixin Tang offers a unique opportunity to expand his trajectory.
Affiliation: The University of Buea, Cameroon
To learn more about ISSBD’s grant programmes, including the 2×2 Grant for Early Career Scholars, please visit our grants page.