Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı

Çiğdem Kagitcibasi was a Turkish psychologist and professor who taught at the Middle East Technical University, Bogazici University and Koc University over a career beginning in 1969. Working in cross-cultural and family psychology, she challenged culture-bound models of human development drawn mainly from European-American research, developing the concept of the autonomous-relational self in her influential 1996 book Family and Human Development across Cultures to examine how modernization reshapes family structures in non-Western societies. She co-founded AÇEV, an organization providing parental education grounded in her research on early child development, and received the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contributions to the International Advancement of Psychology in 1993.