Liz Handley

The overarching goal of Dr. Handley’s research is to advance understanding of the impact of family adversity on development for individuals and families. Her research aims to identify the outcomes, mechanisms, and moderators associated with exposure to family adversity, such as child maltreatment and parent psychopathology, across the life course and across generations. She is especially interested in the biological embedding of stress. Her research seeks to understand how exposure to childhood adversity can disrupt biological processes and lead to the development of mental and physical health challenges. Dr. Handley’s research is grounded in the developmental psychopathology framework, utilizes prospective longitudinal designs with adversity-exposed samples, and emphasizes multiple levels of analysis. Additionally, Dr. Handley has an interest in longitudinal data analysis and advanced quantitative methods. Current projects seek to address the following questions: What is the long-term impact of child maltreatment exposure on adult physical and mental health? What processes (e.g., biological, interpersonal, cognitive) explain why some people who experienced child maltreatment develop negative consequences and others demonstrate resilience? Does child maltreatment exposure affect women’s reproductive health outcomes? What is the unique role of childhood sexual abuse? How and why does a parent’s own history of adversity affect their offspring’s health and wellbeing? Can person-centered data analytic approaches (e.g., latent class and latent profile analysis) advance understanding of the biological embedding of stress?