Academic History
University of California at Berkeley, Ph.D., 1984, Psychology
University of Rhode Island, M.A., 1977, Psychology
University of Rhode Island, B.A., 1973, Psychology
Research Interests
Sociocultural developmental psychology: the developmental roles of narrative and play, social cognition, identity formation, moral development, and the interplay of literacy and orality.
Teaching Interests
Theories of Development
Social and Personality Development
Cultural Psychology
Cognitive and Language Development
Children's Play and Narrative in Learning and Development
Language, Thought, and Culture
Literacy in Developmental and Cross-Cultural Perspective
Gender Development and Gender Identity
Selected Publications
Nicolopoulou, A. , de Sá, A., Ilgaz, H., & Brockmeyer, C. (in press). Using the transformative power of play
to educate hearts and minds: From Vygotsky to Vivian Paley and beyond. Mind, Culture, and Activity (for
Special Issue, "Playworlds of Children and Adults: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Play Pedagogy").
Nicolopoulou, A. & Cole, M. (in press). Design experimentation as a theoretical and empirical tool for
developmental pedagogical research. Pedagogies: An International Journal (for Special Issue,
"Cultural-Historical Activity Theory and Pedagogy").
Nicolopoulou, A. & Weintraub, J. (2009). Why operativity-in-context is not quite a sociocultural model.
Commentary on: The social and psychological: Structure and context inintellectual development, by
Psaltis, Duveen, & Perrett-Clermont. Human Development , 52, 320-328. [*Invited Commentary*]
Nicolopoulou, A. (2009). Rethinking character representation and its development in children's narratives.
In J. Guo et al. (Eds.) Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Psychology of Language: Research in the
Tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin (pp. 241-262). New York: Taylor & Francis.
Nicolopoulou, A. (2008). The elementary forms of narrative coherence in young children's storytelling.
Narrative Inquiry, 18, 300-326.
Nicolopoulou, A. & Richner, E.S. (2007). From actors to agents to persons: The development of character
representation in young children's narratives. Child Development, 78, 412-429.
Nicolopoulou, A. (2007). The interplay of play and narrative in children's development: Theoretical
reflections and concrete examples. In A.Göncü & S. Gaskins (Eds.) Play and Development:
Evolutionary, Sociocultural, and Functional Perspectives (pp. 247-273). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Nicolopoulou, A., McDowell, J., & Brockmeyer, C. (2006). Narrative play and emergent literacy: Storytelling
and story-acting meet journal writing. In D. Singer, R. Golinkoff & K. Hirsh-Pasek (Eds.) Play=Learning
(pp. 124-144). New York: Oxford University Press.
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network (2005). Pathways to reading: The role of oral language in the
transition to reading. Developmental Psychology, 41, 428-442.
Nicolopoulou, A. & Richner, E. S. (2004). 'When your powers combine, I am Captain Planet': The
development significance of individual-and group-authored stories by preschoolers. Discourse Studies,
6, 347-371.
Nicolopoulou, A. (2002). Peer-group culture and narrative development. In S. Blum-Kulka & C. E. Snow
(Eds.), Talking to Adults. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. PDF version.
Richner, E. S., & Nicolopoulou, A. (2001). The narrative construction of differing conceptions of the person
in the development of young children's social understanding . Early Education and Development.
12, 393-432.
Nicolopoulou, A. & Weintraub, J. (1998). Individual and collective representations in social context: A
modest contribution to resuming the interrupted project of a sociocultural developmental psychology.
Human Development, 41, 215-235.
Nicolopoulou, A. (1997). Worldmaking and identity formation in children's narrative play-acting. In B. Cox
& C. Lightfoot (Eds.). Sociogenetic Perspectives on Internalization. (pp. 157 - 187). Mahwah, NJ:
Erlbaum. PDF version.
Nicolopoulou, A. (1997). Children and narratives: Toward an interpretive and sociocultural approach. In
M. Bamberg (Ed.) Narrative Development:Six Approaches. (pp. 179 - 215). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
PDF version.
