Research leader

Prof. Dr. Goda Kaniušonytė

Goda Kaniušonytė is a developmental psychologist whose research focuses on adolescent psychosocial adjustment, especially peer and parent–child relationships. She uses advanced longitudinal and statistical methods to study how individual characteristics and social contexts jointly shape development. She is the author of more than 50 peer-reviewed publications in international journals and handbooks. She is a leading expert on longitudinal developmental methodology and the use of advanced statistical techniques for analyzing complex developmental processes. She has led and co-authored several successful grant proposals, including leadership of the NAVIGATE project on school transition and the ECOPALS project on pro-environmental behavior in adolescent peer groups.

Beyond her own research, she is strongly committed to capacity building and collaboration. She supervises doctoral and Master’s students,has served on international PhD committees (e.g., at Florida Atlantic University), collaborated statistically and substantively with PhD students and senior scholars abroad, and contributed to multi-country consortia such as the Horizon Europe project. She has also co-led international training programs for early-career researchers and organized seminars featuring leading scholars in developmental science and methodology, thereby strengthening research capacity in Lithuania and beyond. She has co-developed innovative methodological tools (e.g., peer nomination measures), contributed to research ethics and open science initiatives, and helped design and implement interventions promoting positive youth development and sustainability.

International collaboration is a central feature of her profile. She has served on international PhD committees (e.g., at Florida Atlantic University), collaborated statistically and substantively with PhD students and senior scholars abroad, and contributed to multi-country consortia such as the BIOTraCes Horizon Europe project. She has also co-led international training programs for early-career researchers and organized seminars featuring leading scholars in developmental science and methodology, thereby strengthening research capacity in Lithuania and beyond.

Institute of Psychology
Applied Psychology Research Laboratory
Mykolas Romeris University
godakan@mruni.eu

 

Prof. Dr. Brett Laursen

Brett Laursen is a Professor of Psychology at
Florida Atlantic University, USA.

Professor Laursen, besides NAVIGATE, is currently
involved in several longitudinal projects, which focus, in one way or another,
on influence within close relationships.

The first project involves a large group of elementary and middle school
children from a school district whose population is representative of students
in the state of Florida. Over the course of an academic year, students identify
changes in friends and changes in behaviors in school, to better understand who
is friends with whom and how influence is apportioned within the relationship.

The second project concerns math achievement in a
group of Latino students as they transition from grade school into middle
school, to identify how transactions between parents and adolescents shape the
child’s math interest and abilities. This project is being conducted in
collaboration with Dr. Jill Denner of ETR Associates.

A final set of projects concerns child
characteristics that (a) moderate associations from parent reading to early
childhood literacy and (b) elicit differential parent engagement in literacy
activities. Several studies converging on this theme are underway at the
Trygfondens Center for Child Research (Aarhus University, Denmark) under the
direction of Professor Dorthe Bleses.

Brett Laursen has received support from the
US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the Lithuanian
Research Council. His work has also been supported by the US National Institute
of Mental Health, the US National Science Foundation and the Jacobs Foundation.

Professor
of Psychology
Florida Atlantic University
http://www.psy.fau.edu/laursen-lab/index.php

Docent Professor of
Social Developmental Psychology
University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Editor-in-Chief
Merrill-Palmer Quarterly
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/mpq/

Founding Editor,  Cambridge Elements in Research Methods for Developmental Science
https://www.cambridge.org/pr/academic/subjects/science/psychology/developmental-psychology/series/elements-research-methods-developmental-science

 

Dr. Gintautas Katulis

My focus in research and work are groups, group dynamics and youth. I am interested in how social interactions, relationships and group factors guide our own self-image and behavior. I am currently focused on classrooms and interactions between pupils along with possible interventions to help increase classroom cohesion. I am a candidate for a PhD at Mykolas Romeris University in Lithuania working on a thesis regarding classroom relationships and experiential learning. I recently joined the project NAVIGATE aiming to learn more about building of friendships amongst adolescents. The forming of friendships and relationships, the dynamics which happen as peers interact are part of my main interests and NAVIGATE explores it deeply.

I am mostly a practiotioner, working as a psychologist with adolescents of social risk. I consult schools and teachers about working with classes and group relationships and I am also part of a network of experiential education experts „Via Experientia“ providing training focused on group dynamics using outdoor adventure methods. I am relatively new to the field of academia, however I believe that groups and relationships are an extremely important topic for youth and combining research and practice can lead to great improvements in working with youth.

Keywords: Social psychology, social interactions, group dynamics, experiential learning.

Institute of Psychology
Applied Psychology Research Laboratory
Mykolas Romeris University
gintautas.katulis@mruni.eu