Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
Dr. Paige Harden received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia and
completed a clinical psychology fellowship at McLean Hospital / Harvard Medical School. She is currently a tenured faculty member in the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she leads the Developmental Behavior Genetics lab. Dr. Harden’s research uses sociogenomic research methods to understand cognitive and psychosocial development in adolescence, and her work is funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, Jacobs Foundation, and Templeton Foundation. She has published over 90 peer-reviewed scientific articles on topics like intelligence, pubertal development, sexual behavior, substance use, delinquency and crime. She received the 2017 Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association. Dr. Harden is the co-director of the Texas Twin Project, a registry of school-age twins in central Texas. She also co-teaches an innovative Introduction to Psychology SMOC (synchronous massive online course), which aims to be a living laboratory for improving undergraduate education through active learning. Dr. Harden lives in south Austin with her two children and three chickens.