SRCD Biennial Awards
It is a tradition of SRCD that at each of our biennial meetings, several major awards are presented, including the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation, Early Career Research Contributions, and Senior Distinguished Contributions.
2025 SRCD Biennial Awards
Call for Nominations
Submission site Now Open & Accepting Nominations!
We are seeking nominations for the SRCD 2025 Biennial Awards! The SRCD Senior Distinguished Contributions Awards, Early Career Research Contribution Award, and the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Awards honor SRCD members’ acclaimed work in developmental science across all career levels. The Awards will be presented at the SRCD 2025 Biennial Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
Nominations for the SRCD 2025 Biennial Awards are due September 17, 2024 (11:59 p.m. EDT)
- All nominations must be submitted via the SRCD online portal.
- All nominees must be SRCD members in order to be considered
- All required documents must be submitted in a PDF format.
- Please send inquiries regarding all submission sites to scholar@srcd.org.
SRCD Senior Distinguished Contributions Awards
Established in 1977, this collection of awards recognizes SRCD members who have distinguished themselves over a sustained period of time in at least one domain of research and service. Therefore, this award is ordinarily given to more senior SRCD members. A variety of awards have been made, but most recently in these five areas:
- Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Child Development - In recognition of an SRCD member’s continuous lifetime contributions to the scientific body of knowledge and understanding of children’s development
- Distinguished Contributions to Public Policy & Practice in Child Development - In recognition of an SRCD member’s continuous lifetime contributions to research that inform policy and practice for the benefit of children
- Distinguished Contributions to Understanding International, Cultural, and Contextual Diversity in Child Development - In recognition of an SRCD member’s continuous lifetime contributions to the role of culture and context in the global understanding of child development
- Distinguished Contributions to Mentoring of Developmental Scientists - In recognition of an SRCD member’s extraordinary efforts to support the training of new generations of scholars conducting high-quality research on developmental issues (added in 2015)
- Distinguished Contributions to Interdisciplinary Understanding of Child Development - In recognition of an SRCD member’s efforts to promote interdisciplinary understanding of developmental issues and forge ties across disciplinary boundaries (added in 2015)
- Distinguished Contributions to Advancing Research on Child Development in the Majority World - In recognition of an SRCD member's distinguished scholarly contributions to advancing the understanding of child development in communities across the Majority World (added in 2025).
Past areas in which awards have been made include:
- Distinguished Contributions to Education in Child Development - In recognition of an SRCD member’s continuous lifetime contributions toward educating others about child development as a research-based body of knowledge
- Distinguished Contributions to the Society for Research in Child Development - In recognition of an individual’s contributions to the success of SRCD in achieving its purposes as an organization
- Distinguished Contributions to the Lives of Children - In recognition of an individual’s continuous lifetime contributions to the lives of children through policy, practice, communications, and advocacy
The award for Contributions to the Lives of Children is often made to a non-member, and the award for Contributions to SRCD may be given to a non-member if appropriate.
New for the 2025 Biennial: Distinguished Contributions to Advancing Research on Child Development in the Majority World Award
SRCD Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Awards
Created in 2008, the SRCD Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Awards are given for dissertations completed in the previous year that are unusually noteworthy. This award comes with a $500 honorarium and nominations are submitted by the mentor of the dissertation thesis. Read the full nomination criteria and details on using the site before starting your 2025 nomination.
SRCD Early Career Research Contributions Awards
Established in 2002, this award is given to SRCD members who have distinguished themselves as researchers and scholars, as evidenced through research, publications, and scholarly activity. The nominee should be no more than six years beyond the Ph.D. or equivalent degree (obtained after January 1, 2013). Read the full nomination criteria and details on using the site before starting your 2025 nomination.