Alexandra Freund PhD

Alexandra M. Freund is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Zurich, Dept. of Psychology. She studied psychology at the University of Heidelberg and the Free University of Berlin, where she also received her Ph.D. She was a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University and returned to Germany to co-direct a project on successful aging and developmental regulation with Paul B. Baltes at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin for seven years. After that, she was an assistant professor and later an associate professor at Northwestern University. Since 2005, she has been at the University of Zurich where she holds the chair of “Developmental Psychology: Adulthood.” Alexandra M. Freund was elected as one of the founding members of the Young Academy of Sciences. In 2013, she received a mentoring award from the Section for Developmental Psychology of the German Psychological Association, and in 2015 the Humboldt-Research Award. She is a fellow of the APS, and in 2017 she was elected as a member of the Wilhelm Wundt Society. She serves on several editorial boards; from 2010-2017, she was an associate editor of the APA Journal of Psychology and Aging. Central research interests are processes of successful aging, developmental regulation, and motivation across the lifespan.