Alison Gopnik Keynote Speaker

Professor of psychology and philosophy, University of California, Berkeley
Child psychology specialist
Author, "The Gardener and the Carpenter" (2016)

Alison Gopnik's Biography

Alison Gopnik is an American professor psychology and an affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an internationally recognized leader in the study of children’s learning and development and was the first to argue that children’s minds could help us understand deep philosophical questions.

Her collection of writings, numbering in the hundreds, on subjects such as psychology and cognitive sciences has appeared in Scientific American, the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times, New Scientist, and many others. She is also the author of the books “Words, Thoughts, and Theories” (1998), “The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind ” (2000), “Causal Learning: Psychology, Philosophy, and Computation” (2007), “The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life” (2010), and “The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children” (2016).

She has frequently appeared on TV and radio including The Charlie Rose Show and The Colbert Report. Slate writes of Gopnik, “One of the most prominent researchers in the field, Gopnik is also one of the finest writers, with a special gift for relating scientific research to the questions that parents and others most want answered. This is where to go if you want to get into the head of a baby.” Gopnik is currently a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, sharing the “Mind & Matter” column with Robert Sapolsky every other Saturday.

Child psychology

Parenting methods to ensure well developed children

Adult psychology in comparison to children

She is a University of California, Berkeley professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy who has shaped how leaders understand children’s learning and development through the lens of cognitive science and big philosophical questions.
She translates rigorous research on how young minds explore, learn and reason into practical, evidence-based insights that sharpen decision-making, innovation and learning cultures.
She is an influential public intellectual whose writing spans major outlets and whose long-running Wall Street Journal “Mind & Matter” column connects scientific ideas to the questions people most want answered.
She brings authoritative storytelling from a landmark body of work including The Scientist in the Crib, The Philosophical Baby and The Gardener and the Carpenter, giving audiences a clear framework for understanding how humans learn and change across a lifetime.