Sophie P. Barnes

Sophie P. Barnes, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Yale Child Study Center and The Education Collaboratory at Yale. Her research focuses on the science and practice of social and emotional learning (SEL), with particular attention to the classroom and school contexts that shape children’s development from early childhood through adolescence. Using rigorous quantitative, psychometric, and evidence synthesis methods, she studies how social-emotional environments influence student outcomes, evaluates innovative SEL interventions across diverse settings, and develops approaches for translating research into practice for educators, policymakers, and communities.  

At Yale, Dr. Barnes helps lead an Institute of Education Sciences-funded Living Systematic Review of universal school-based SEL interventions, designed to provide regularly updated evidence through public-facing reports and interactive tools. Her scholarship spans classroom observation and measurement, implementation science, executive function and self-regulation, and meta-analysis, with publications appearing in journals including Developmental Science, Frontiers in Psychology, and Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness. She is also co-editor of Measuring Noncognitive Skills in School Settings: Assessments of Executive Function and Social-Emotional Competencies and co-author of a forthcoming chapter in the Handbook of Social and Emotional Learning. Across her work, Dr. Barnes is committed to advancing equitable, evidence-based approaches that support children’s social, emotional, and academic well-being in schools and out-of-school settings. 

Prior to joining Yale, Dr. Barnes earned her Ph.D. in Human Development, Learning & Teaching from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she worked in the Ecological Approaches to Social and Emotional Learning (EASEL) Lab under the mentorship of Stephanie Jones. She has an Ed.M. from the Child Advocacy Strand of the Human Development and Psychology program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a B.S. in Applied Psychology from New York University.