Dr. Jeanine Grütter received her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Her doctoral work focused on the development of socio-moral competencies and peer relations in diverse schools and the role of teacher behavior for inclusive peer relations. The thesis was conducted in collaboration with the University for Teacher Education in Lucerne. Additionally, Dr. Grütter was also involved in different evaluation studies with regards to the quality of inclusive schooling and the design of interventions to enhance inclusive peer attitudes. This research benefited from Dr. Grütter’s experience as a school psychologist and teacher for students with special educational needs. During Dr. Grütter’s doctoral studies, she also spent one year at the Laboratory for Social-Emotional Development and Intervention at the University of Toronto in Canada. After finishing her PhD, Dr. Grütter was awarded a fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation to conduct her independent research project in Nepal. This longitudinal study is called “Social Development and Social Change” and investigates individual, relational, and contextual predictors of children’s and adolescents’ reasoning about social inequalities and their motivation for social change. As part of this project, Dr. Grütter has been a postdoctoral research associate at Tribhuvan University in Nepal and the Lab for Social and Moral Development at the University of Maryland in the U.S.A, where she remains a frequent visitor.

Since 2018, Dr. Grütter has joined the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development at the University of Zurich as a postdoctoral research associate, where she is examining the interplay in the development of different competencies and the role of contextual factors (i.e., school context, peer relations) from early childhood to young adulthood.