Alexander Vazsonyi

Department of Family Sciences
John I. & Patricia J. Buster Endowed Professor of Family Sciences
Professor of Psychology

Contact: vazsonyi@uky.edu

 

Specializes In:

  • Child and Adolescent Development in Context
  • Adjustment, Well-being, Health and Health Compromising Behaviors
  • Crime, Deviance, and Violence
  • Cross-Cultural/Cross-national Comparative Research

 

International Experience:

  • Cross-cultural dissertation project focused on the etiology of deviance in American and Swiss youth
  • Cross-cultural comparative research project focused on adolescence and adolescent development across cultures: China, Czech Republic, Hungary, Japan, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, The Netherlands, Turkey, the United States
  • Ongoing accelerated longitudinal study in Brno (Czech Republic) focused on about early adolescent transitions in school (600 youth), in collaboration with the Czech Academy of Sciences
  • Cross-sectional study on Roma youth in the Czech Republic
  • Representative to the United Nations (Geneva and Vienna), Economic and Social Council (for the American Society of Criminology).
  • Visiting Scholar to Netherlands Institute for the Study of Criminality and Law Enforcement (NISCALE), Leiden, The Netherlands.
  • Invited as Senior Scholar to the 2014 EARA-SRA Summer School (June 2-6, 2014), sponsored by the Johan Jacobs Foundation, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
  • Appointed Member of the Fulbright Senior Specialists Peer Review Committee for the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program, Council for International Exchange of Scholars, Washington, DC
  • Member of Fulbright Selection Committees, Slovene Student and Slovene Scholar Fulbright Awards, United States Department of State, U.S. Embassy Ljubljana, Slovenia
  • Invited external reviewer, Phases I and II of 5-7 year review cycle of all Institutes part of the Academy of the Sciences of the Czech Republic (ASCR), Prague, Czech Republic.
  • Invited external reviewer, Council for Earth and Life Sciences (ALW) Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), The Netherlands
  • Invited external reviewer, Research Grant Council (RGC) of Hong Kong, China
  • Invited external reviewer, Swiss National Science Foundation, Bern, Switzerland
  • Invited external reviewer, The Israel Science Foundation, The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem, Israel

 

Selected Awards:

  • Dissertation Fellowship, Swiss National Science Foundation (NSF), Bern, Switzerland.
  • Fulbright Fellow, College of Education, University of Maribor, Slovenia; United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs
  • Fulbright-Masaryk University Distinguished Chair in Social Studies, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Czech Republic; United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

 

Other:

  • Invited Keynote address, Cross-Cultural Comparative Research on Adolescents: From Biology to Culture, and back? Conference on Social Processes and Personality (SPO2013), organized by the Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic (EU): Trest, Czech Republic, EU.
  • Invited Keynote address at The Conference on Psychological Assessment of Children and Youth: Research, Prevention, and School Counseling, Myths and Realities of Adolescent Problem Behaviors: What we Know and What we can do About it. Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.

 

Languages:

  • Balanced Trilingual German, Swiss-German, and English
  • Fluent in French