FPG People
Debra Skinner, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
debra.skinner@unc.edu
PH: 919.966.4571
FAX: 919.966.7532
Mailing Address:
Campus Box 8040
The University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-8040
Web Site(s):
www.unc.edu/depts/anthro/
Debra Skinner, Ph.D. is a Senior Scientist at FPG Child Development Institute, and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anthropology at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Skinner is a sociocultural anthropologist with postdoctoral training and research in Nepal and the U.S. on interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approaches to the study of human development. She has conducted a number of ethnographic and multi-method longitudinal studies on families' understandings of and responses to childhood disability, and the broader cultural, economic and political contexts of these beliefs and practices; developed theoretical models and methods to assess identity and parental beliefs; and worked to integrate methods on large interdisciplinary and longitudinal projects around issues related to poverty, families, and disability.
Her current research includes family adaptations to and understandings of genetic disorder, specifically fragile X syndrome; the social and ethical dimensions of expanded newborn screening; poverty studies in urban and rural contexts; and children's constructions of race/ethnic and other social identities in the school context.
View Currently Funded Projects of Debra Skinner
(click on Project names to see project details)- UNC Developmental Disabilities Research Center
- National Professional Development Center on Inclusion
- Administrative Supplement for the Family Adaptation to FXS (ARRA)
- Choices of Care Among Latino Families in the New South
- Family Adaptation to Fragile X Syndrome
Center for Genomics and Society
Role: Co-Principal Investigator
Web site: genomics.unc.edu/genomicsandsociety/
