Julie Poehlmann

Julie Poehlmann, an internationally recognized expert on children with incarcerated parents and their families, earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in child clinical psychology at Syracuse University. She has been a professor in Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a licensed psychologist in Wisconsin for 26 years. She studies resilience in children and families in challenging contexts from a social justice perspective. She uses both quantitative and qualitative research methods, especially observational approaches that focus on children and families in their natural contexts, as well as physiological measures. She has published extensively and worked with Sesame Street to design and evaluate their Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration initiative for children with incarcerated parents and their families. She is currently one of the principal investigators of the Wisconsin site of the NIH-funded multisite study HEALthy Brain and Child Development study, which is designed to help understand the effects of pre- and post-natal substance exposures and children’s transitions to nonparental care.