Beale Spencer, a leading scholar of diversity, resilience and human development, has developed critical insights regarding vulnerability, risk, and resilience as normatively experienced by diverse individuals, including those considered privileged. She developed the Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (P-VEST), a theoretical framework that incorporates identity, cultural, and ecological perspectives that has been accepted as a unifying theory from the American Psychological Association Task Force. She has recently launched the Urban Resiliency Initiative, emphasizing educational contexts, interrogating neighborhood policing encounters, and seeking to diminish vulnerability and increased global resiliency. 

She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, the American Psychological Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She earned her doctorate in Human Development at the University of Chicago and has been a member of the faculty since 2009.

Read more about Professor Spencer here.