Emily Anne Meland

Emily Meland is an adjunct lecturer and postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is also co-director of Simple Interactions, a nonprofit dedicated to encouraging, enriching, and empowering the human interactions around children, families, and their helpers.

Her research and practice are focused on supporting educators to foster children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development in ways that honor and sustain their unique strengths, cultures, and backgrounds. At the heart of her work with educators (and those who support them!) are the simple, everyday interactions that foster the healthy development of children, youth, and adults. Meland was formerly an elementary educator in Cambridge and Lawrence, MA. At HGSE, she teaches courses on social and emotional learning, empowering human relationships, and adult learning and professional development in an age of AI. 

Meland frequently leads professional learning for schools and districts, nonprofits, early childhood systems, and state agencies. She is a postdoctoral fellow in the Developmental Interactions Lab, at Project Zero, and for The Compass Collaborative. Her research has been published in Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy and Frontiers in Psychology. 

Meland holds a Ph.D. in Education and an Ed.M. in International Education Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and an A.B. in Social Anthropology from Harvard College. Most importantly, she is Mom to three little ones, Theo, Henry, and Milo, who are her greatest teachers.