Harold Grotevant

Harold D. Grotevant, PhD, served as department head and professor of Family Social Science twice – from 1990 to 1995 and again from 2001-2003. He joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2008 where he currently holds the Rudd Family Foundation Chair in Psychology. 

He is the founding director of the Rudd Adoption Research Program that connects adoption research with policy and practice through conferences, workshops, graduate and postdoctoral training, and stimulation of research activities.  His research focuses on relationships in adoptive families (especially open adoption), and on identity development in adolescents and young adults. His work has resulted in over 160 articles and chapters as well as several books, including Openness in Adoption: Exploring Family Connections (with Ruth McRoy, Sage Publications, 1998). 

He directs the Minnesota / Texas Adoption Research Project, which examines outcomes for adopted children whose families vary in terms of contact with their birth relatives. This longitudinal study, begun with Dr. Ruth McRoy in the mid-1980s, has followed the children and their families into young adulthood. For further information, please visit the Rudd Chair and the Minnesota Texas Adoption Research Project.

He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the National Council on Family Relations. In 2012, he was honored as the Outstanding Scholar in Adoption by the Adoption Initiative of St. John’s University and Montclair State University. In 2016, he was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal from UMass Amherst, the highest honor bestowed to faculty by the campus.