Jane Gillham, Ph.D.

Jane Gillham is a clinical psychologist, researcher and educator. She is a professor and current chair of Psychology at Swarthmore College.

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Jane’s scholarship and applied work focuses on resilience and well-being in young people. Much of this work aims to develop, evaluate, and disseminate school and community-based well-being programs. She is particularly interested in programs that aim to prevent depression and other common difficulties among children and adolescents, and programs that aim to promote resilience, character strengths, and other aspects of social and emotional well-being.

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Jane regularly collaborates with schools and other organizations and with researchers at many other academic institutions throughout the world. Together with her collaborators, she has developed several well-being programs and curricula. Jane has led several large-scale evaluations of school and community well-being programs, including projects funded by the United States’ National Institute of Mental Health and the United States’ Department of Education. She is the author of numerous academic articles. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Positive Psychology, and has served on the editorial boards for Psychological Bulletin and the International Journal of Emotional Education. Together with Drs. Seligman, Reivich and Jaycox, she is a co-author of The Optimistic Child.

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Jane completed her B.A. in Psychology at Princeton University, her Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and her clinical internship at Yale Child Study Center. While at Yale, she also completed a fellowship at the Zigler Center for Child Development and Social Policy Research. In addition to teaching at Swarthmore for the past 20 years, Jane has also taught courses at the University of Pennsylvania’s Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program and worked as a Research Associate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center.