About Niobe Way
Catchy Phrase Goes Here
Niobe Way….
is a Professor of Developmental Psychology at NYU, the founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity (PACH; pach.org), creative advisor of agapi, and the Principal Investigator on the Listening Project, an ongoing and empirically grounded school-based 26-lesson curriculum that aims to foster curiosity and connection among students and teachers in schools in New York City. She was the President of the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA), received her B.A. from U.C. Berkeley, her doctorate from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, and was a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral fellow at Yale University in the psychology department.
Catchy Phrase Goes Here
Her work focuses on social and emotional development and how cultural ideologies shape families and child development in the U.S. and China. She is a principal investigator of a 20-year longitudinal study of 1,200 families that examines how the changing economic, political, and social contexts in China shape families and children in Nanjing, China. She has been researching social and emotional development of adolescents for almost 40 years, and she has authored or co-authored over one hundred peer reviewed journal articles and seven single authored, co-authored, or co-edited books.
Her latest co-edited book is The Crisis of Connection: Its Roots, Consequences, and Solution (NYU Press). She has also co-edited with Judy Chu, Adolescents Boys: Exploring Diverse Cultures of Boyhood (NYU Press). Her last single authored book is Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection (Harvard University Press), which was the inspiration for "Close" a movie that won the Grand Prix Award at Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film.
Way is regularly featured in mainstream media speaking on the topics of boys, friendships, loneliness, teenagers, gender stereotypes, masculinity, and the roots of violence. She has been interviewed on The Daily Show, the Hidden Brain podcast, Stay Tuned with Preet and more, and given a TED Talk Why “boys will be boys” is a myth—and a harmful one at that. Her expertise has been highlighted by the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, among many others.
REBELS WITH A CAUSE
Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture
Soaring rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and violence signal a society in crisis, driven by a "boy" culture that values stoicism and material success over emotional expression. Niobe Way argues in "REBELS WITH A CAUSE" that this culture misrepresents boys and contributes to widespread mental health issues. Healing requires rejecting stereotypes like "boys will be boys" and addressing mental health within this broader cultural context. Way advocates for fostering empathy and understanding through listening, and provides practical, research-backed strategies for homes, schools, and workplaces.
“Rebels with a Cause may just be the book we need to save America from itself.”
—Lisa Arrastia, founding director of The Ed Factory and Associate Professor of Education, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
“Rebels With a Cause is a key intervention — as a developmental psychologist of immense experience, Niobe Way is uniquely positioned to unravel the very notions of (masculine) development that bind our society as a whole into structures of violence, exclusion, and isolation; in the often painful testimony of boys and teenagers, she also finds a compass to show us the way home.”
—David Wengrow, co-author of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity