Catherine Snow, Ph.D.
Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Harvard University

Catherine Snow is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Education in the Human Development and Psychology Department at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She received her Ph.D. in psychology from McGill and worked for several years in the linguistics department of the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests in children’s language development, including the role of the family and cultural differences in familial roles, expanded after she joined Harvard’s education faculty to include literacy development, social and familial influences on literacy development, acquisition of English and bilingualism in language minority children, and literacy acquisition in a second language. She has co-authored books on language development (Pragmatic Development with Anat Ninio) and on literacy development (Unfulfilled Expectations: Home and School Influences on Literacy, with W. Barnes, J. Chandler, I. Goodman & L. Hemphill), and published on these topics many articles in refereed journals and chapters in edited volumes. Snow’s contributions to the field include membership on several journal editorial boards, co-directorship for several years of the Child Language Data Exchange System, and editorship of Applied Psycholinguistics. She served as a board member at the Center for Applied Linguistics and a member of the National Research Council Committee on Establishing a Research Agenda on Schooling for Language Minority Children. She chaired the National Research Council Committee on Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, which produced a report that has been widely adopted as a basis for reform of reading instruction and professional development. She currently serves on the NRC’s Council for the Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. A member of the National Academy of Education, Snow has held visiting appointments at the University of Cambridge, England, Universidad Autonoma in Madrid, and The Institute of Advanced Studies of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and has guest taught at Universidad Central de Caracas, El Colegio de Mexico, Odense University in Denmark, and several institutions in The Netherlands.

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