Harold D. Grotevant

Harold D. Grotevant, Ph.D., holds the Rudd Family Foundation Chair in Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA, where he is the founding director of the Rudd Adoption Research Program. The work of this position connects adoption research with policy and practice through conferences, workshops, graduate and postdoctoral training, and stimulation of research activities.  His research focuses on relationships in adoptive families (especially open adoption), and on identity development in adolescents and young adults. His work has resulted in over 150 articles and chapters as well as several books, including Openness in Adoption: Exploring Family Connections (with Ruth McRoy, Sage Publications, 1998). He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the National Council on Family Relations; and recipient of awards for research, teaching, mentoring, outreach, and educational leadership.  In 2012, he was honored as the Outstanding Scholar in Adoption by the Adoption Initiative of St. John’s University and Montclair State University. In 2016, he was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal from UMass Amherst, the highest honor bestowed to faculty by the campus. He directs the Minnesota/Texas Adoption Research Project, which examines outcomes for adopted children whose families vary in terms of contact with their birth relatives. This longitudinal study, begun with Dr. Ruth McRoy in the mid-1980s, has followed the children and their families into young adulthood. He and his students hosted the first International Conference on Adoption Research (ICAR) in Minneapolis in 1999, and he has played an active role in every conference since.