DR. KARLYN ADAMS-WIGGINS
Karlyn Adams-Wiggins is an Associate Professor of Applied Development Psychology and affiliate of the Black Studies Department at Portland State University. Adams-Wiggins earned a PhD in Education (Concentration: Learning, Cognition, Instruction, & Development) from Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Education in 2015. Prior to joining Portland State’s Psychology Department in 2017, Karlyn was an Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Tyler’s School of Education. Dr. Adams-Wiggins is an educational and developmental psychologist, broadly interested in the intersection of academic achievement motivation and identity, with a specific focus on how adolescents’ identities are negotiated in social interactions. Karlyn is a member of the Mind, Culture, and Activity/Cultural Praxis editorial collective and serves on the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Cultural-Historical Research SIG’s executive board. Karlyn also previously served as president of the Scholarly Consortium for Innovative Psychology in Education (SCIPIE) and chaired the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Adolescence & Youth Development SIG. Karlyn was a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow during 2021-2023. Karlyn’s work addresses social interaction and identity construction through two primary research themes: 1) achievement motivation from a situative perspective in reform-oriented science learning environments and 2) Black/African diaspora youths’ construction of identities in context. Current projects also address teacher identity development within professional learning communities.