Natalia Rojas, PhD

Natalia Rojas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population Health at New York University Grossman School of Medicine. Trained as an applied developmental psychologist, her research investigates how emergent bilingual children’s interactions with teachers, caregivers, and peers shape their school readiness and health outcomes. As a bilingual, mixed method, community-engaged scholar, Natalia Rojas’ research seeks to eliminate educational and health inequities by developing and evaluating sustainable, system-level approaches to training and supporting teachers of culturally- and linguistically-diverse children. A second line of research aims to investigate multi-level approaches that uplift culturally-sustaining protective parenting practices to promote the mental health, ethnic-racial identity, and bilingualism among emergent bilingual children.

Some examples of her community-engaged and research-practice-policy work include a research-practice partnership with NYC district leaders, a collaborative project with the New York Immigration Coalition, and community-based initiative to improve school readiness among immigrant children and families. Natalia Rojas’ research has been supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation and Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2018/2023), and the National Science Foundation. Her work has been published in the Early Childhood Research Quarterly, AERA Open, Journal of Educational Psychology and Journal of School Psychology. She is also a recipient of the Promising Scholar award from Foundation of Child Development (2023). Natalia Rojas holds a doctorate in Applied Psychology from New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.