Darcia Narvaez
Professor Emerita
- Department
- Psychology
- College or School
- College of Arts and Letters
- Year of Emeritus Status 2020
Darcia Narvaez is Professor of Psychology Emerita at the University of Notre Dame. She studies flourishing, compassionate moral development and ecological attachment in children and adults. She explores how nested life experience and societal culture interact to influence well-being and virtuous character in children and adults.
Her earlier careers include professional musician, business owner, classroom music teacher, classroom Spanish teacher, and seminarian. She grew up bilingual/bicultural but calls the earth her home.
She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, the American Educational Research Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is the author or editor of dozens of books, chapters, and articles.
Her recent books include Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom (with Four Arrows, Halton, Collier, & Enderle); Basic Needs, Wellbeing and Morality: Fulfilling Human Potential and Embodied Morality; Evolution, Early Experience and Human Development (with Panksepp, Schore and Gleason); Ancestral Landscapes in Human Evolution: Culture, Childrearing and Social Wellbeing (with Valentino, Mckenna, Fuentes & Gray).
Her book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom, won the 2015 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association and the 2017 Expanded Reason Award.
Her most recent books include Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth and The Evolved Nest: Nature’s Way of Raising Children and Creating Connected Communities.
She is creating short films, including Breaking the Cycle and Reimagining Humanity. She hosts the webpage EvolvedNest.org and serves as president of KindredWorld.org.
Email: dnarvaez@nd.edu