Dr. Denise Kennedy studies social and emotional development in children and families. Her research focuses on sibling relationships, parent-child relationships, and marital relationships, more specifically, the social and emotional development of children and how they are able to regulate emotions in the context of the family. She also holds a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and Marriage and Family Therapy. She helped develop and implement the More Fun With Sisters and Brothers Program at the University of Illinois and it is still being used there today at the Family Resiliency Center in Urbana, IL. The program is an experimental intervention that examines the role of emotion regulation in promoting prosocial sibling relationships with children ages 3 to 9 years of age. She completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Michigan in Developmental Psychology and worked on a large longitudinal NICHD project, the Family Transitions Study. This study looks at families as they transition to the birth of a second child. Various family factors are investigated such as, the marital relationship, parent-child relationships, attachment, temperament, sibling relationships, and several social-emotional factors like the development of empathy, guilt, and emotion regulation. Her primary research on this project was to develop several different observational coding systems which have included looking at sibling jealousy, marital interactions, parental-child relationships, and parental control behaviors. Dr. Kennedy has several publications in the area of sibling relationships and jealousy in children. She is a member of the American Psychological Association, Society for Research on Child Development, and the National Council on Family Relations.

Selected Recent Publications:
Volling, B. L., Kennedy, D. E., & Jackey, L. M. H. (2010). The development of sibling jealousy. In M. Legerstee & S. Hart (Eds). Handbook on the development of jealousy. Blackwell Publishers.

Kennedy, D. E., & Kramer L. (2008). The role of emotion regulation in promoting prosocial sibling relationships. Family Relations 567-578 (57).

Kennedy, D. E. & Volling, B.L. (2008). Sibling relationships. In H.T. Reis and S.K. Sprecher (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Human Relationships, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications