After earning her Ph.D., Dr. Benner completed a one-year postdoctoral research position in Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She then completed a NICHD-funded Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA postdoctoral fellowship at the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). She is currently a professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at UT Austin.

Dr. Benner’s substantive research interests center on the development of low-income and race/ethnic minority youth, investigating how social contexts influence experiences of marginalization and discrimination, school transitions, and developmental outcomes during adolescence. As a developmental psychologist, the core of her research program is a fundamental developmental question—what are the continuities and changes in the social, emotional, and cognitive growth and maturation of young people? Reflecting her training in educational demography, she works to answer this question with an awareness of how such developmental patterns are embedded in the groups, contexts, and social structures of society.