About Darcia

Darcia Narvaez is a Professor of Psychology Emerita at the University of Notre Dame. She is the co-founder of the public and professional educational outreach project the Evolved Nest Initiative whose nonprofit mission is to share her science research into developing appropriate baselines for lifelong human wellness and providing guidelines for fostering full human potential. This wellbeing baseline is imperative at this time as the United States ranks 40th out of 40 developed countries in public policies that support families. (See the UNICEF Report.)

In 2024 Darcia received the Presidential Citation Award from Division 24 of the American Psychological Association (APA). Established in 2019, the Presidential Citation Award honors a nationally or internationally recognized scholar who has made significant contributions to the field of psychology or to a body of interdisciplinary scholarship. Narvaez was nominated for the Presidential Citation Award based on her work that supports the flourishing of theoretical psychology in both a distinguished record of publication and teaching and the educational outreach programs and events offered to the general public through the Evolved Nest Initiative. The 2024 Presidential Citation is awarded directly from the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, Division 24, of the APA.

The 2024 award is the second time the APA has recognized Narvaez’s work. Her book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom, also won the APA’s 2015 William James Book Award. The Evolved Nest Initiative, ENI, is based on the interdisciplinary science research and insights found in this book. 

A trilogy of films featuring the science of the evolved nest, narrated by Darcia, are: Breaking the Cycle, The Evolved Nest: Nature's Way of Raising Children; and Reimagining Humanity. The films have been translated into German and Spanish, and Breaking the Cycle has additionally been translated into Turkish. All films are subtitled in 14 languages.

In 2022, Narvaez was elected a fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the largest international body of professional scientists in the world and publisher of the prestigious journal Science. Narvaez was honored for her distinguished contributions illuminating typical and atypical development in terms of well-being, morality and sustainable wisdom. 

In a 2020 analysis of top scientists, Narvaez emerged in the top 2% of scientists worldwide. Of the eight million scientists in the world, the analysis concerned those who had at least five articles published in scientific journals between 1996 and 2017 – over six million scientists. Individuals were ranked according to various criteria, including number of citations of their work.

In 2017, Narvaez’s book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom, was chosen for the Expanded Reason Award from among more than 360 total entries from 170 universities and 30 countries. Narvaez received the prize, including a substantial monetary award, at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Vatican City on September 27, 2017.  The book also received the William James Award from the American Psychological Association in 2015. 

For the first portion of her career, Narvaez investigated moral psychology and moral development in typical ways — through studying reason, cognition, and education. But several years ago, she grew deeply interested in cross-disciplinary insights into evolutionary issues. As she read deeper into neuro- and clinical sciences, she began to see all sorts of connections that sparked further research.

“I realized that all these fields bore on moral development. I was awakened to the fact that human beings are a particular species with particular needs that, especially in early life, need to be fulfilled in order to construct an individual’s sociality and compassionate morality,” she said. “The key insight was realizing that our species’ evolved nest is vital for fostering our cooperative human nature. When the evolved nest is degraded, as it is in industrialized countries, it can impair capacities for cooperation and compassion because early stress is toxic to species-typical neurobiological function.”

Her empirical, theoretical, and applied research now focuses on the kinds of characteristics notable in communities that provide the evolved nest to children from conception, and nest all

ages throughout life, societies that demonstrate wellbeing, heart-minded morality, and communal imagination. 

Narvaez hosted interdisciplinary conferences at the University of Notre Dame regarding early experience and human development in 2010, 2012, and 2014. In 2016 she organized a conference on Sustainable Wisdom: Integrating Indigenous KnowHow for Global Flourishing. (Click on the links to see the full conferences in video on the Evolved Nest's YouTube Channel.)

She is the author or editor of numerous books, textbooks, and articles: see The Science page for listings. Visit her University of Notre Dame page here.

Darcia is the current president of the award-winning, venerable nonprofit Kindred World. The Evolved Nest is an initiative of Kindred World. See all of Kindred World's strategies and initiatives for advancing a Wisdom-based, Wellness-Informed Society here. She is a contributing editor to Kindred, the first global, eco-parenting magazine; a board of directors member of Attachment Parenting International; and an advisory board member of the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health, APPPAH. 

Visit the Evolved Nest Initiative.

Read Darcia Narvaez's work on Kindred.

Discover the Worldview Chart and Worldview Literacy Project based on her acclaimed book with Four Arrows, Restoring the Kinship Worldview.

Subscribe to the Evolved Nest newsletter here.

Look for the upcoming Nesting Ambassador's program launch in 2025.

In English, my name is pronounced DAR-sha narv-EYES. In Spanish, it’s pronounced the way it looks, Darcia Narváez.

My Credentials: Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame, Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Educational Research Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

My Bio: I was born in Minnesota (USA) but when I was six weeks old, we moved to Puerto Rico where my father was born. Half my childhood was spent in Minnesota, where my German-American mother was born and the other half was spent living in Spanish-speaking places (Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia, Spain). I grew up bilingual/bicultural and call Earth my home. (Listen to Darcia's story on Kindred Magazine.)

My Careers: My life has been an adventure through many careers. I was a professional church musician (pipe organ) and classroom music teacher (including one year in the Philippines). I was a middle school Spanish teacher and had my own business teaching Spanish to adults using super-learning techniques. I have a Master of Divinity from Luther Seminary and a PhD in educational psychology from the University of MN where I earned tenure. I moved to the University of Notre Dame in 2000 and retired in 2020 to focus on public education.

My Research: In my research (theory, data collection, application), I study the development of species-normal morality and wellbeing from an interdisciplinary perspective, incorporating evolutionary, anthropological, developmental, clinical, education and neuro-sciences.  

My academic scholarship has moved from work on nonconscious moral rationality (in the 1990s), to moral character education in the schools (late 1990s- early 2000s), to the neurobiology of moral development (mid 2000s to present), to the study of human flourishing integrating Indigenous wisdom and evolved child raising practices (presently). 

My Publications: I have published dozens of academic journal articles and chapters and over twenty books. Recent books for nonacademics include Restoring the Kinship Worldview, and The Evolved Nest: Nature’s Way of Raising Children and Creating Connected Communities and Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom which won the 2015 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association and the 2017 Expanded Reason Award. 

Life Questions: From my first memories, living around the world as a child, I was concerned about the wellbeing of children. I could not understand why the world was so unjust. What was wrong? Of course, I also thought something was wrong with me when I had episodes of frozen brain when called to speak up in class. So I wondered what was wrong with me? My academic research journey brought me to the goal of finding out the answer to both questions—what was wrong with the world and with me—and then to figure out how to heal both myself and the world. The answer is that humanity forgot its millions-year-old wellness-informed pathway of nestedness.

My Mission: My life aim now is to help the world heal by restoring our evolved nestedness, our ancestral wisdom. This includes developmental nestedness, providing children with the support needed to grow their species-normal compassionate nature. It also includes vertical nestedness, rootedness in Nature’s ways and cycles and in cosmic oneness, and horizontal nestedness, respectful honoring of ancestors, relations and future generations. 

My Films: My recent short films to help open up our imaginations include Breaking the Cycle, The Evolved Nest, and Reimagining Humanity (2-minute trailer). 

My Websites: Read my blog essays, podcasts, videos, educational materials for the Evolved Nest at Kindred Magazine. I co-founded the Evolved Nest Initiative found at EvolvedNest.org and serve as president of KindredWorld.org. More information can be found at DarciaNarvaez.com and my University of Notre Dame faculty website.

Youtube: Evolved Nest Initiative, DarciaNarvaez

SoundCloud (podcasts): Evolved Nest

The award was given by University Francisco de Vitoria and the Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation to recognize innovation in scientific research and academic programs based on Benedict XVI’s proposal to broaden the horizons of reason. The university and foundation sought academic works that question and explicitly incorporate reflections on the anthropology, epistemology, ethics and meaning that exist within the specific science. Two awards were given for research, and two were given for academic programs.

Narvaez’s book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom, was chosen from among more than 360 total entries from 170 universities and 30 countries. Narvaez will receive the prize, including a substantial monetary award, at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Vatican City on September 27, 2017.

Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom outlines an evolutionary framework for early childhood experience that is grounded in developmental systems theory, encompassing not only genes but a wide array of inheritances and epigenetic factors. It describes the neurobiological bases for the development of distinctive moral mindsets, addressing ethical functioning at multiple levels of complexity and context before turning to a theory of the emergence of wisdom. Finally, it suggests that we honor the sociocultural orientations of our ancestors and cousins in small-band hunter-gatherer societies—the norm for 99% of human history—for a re-envisioning of an organic, sustainable moral life, from the way we value and organize child raising to how we cooperate with a living planet.

The book integrates elements of anthropology, clinical and developmental psychology, and neuroscience to examine the influences in early childhood that help shape a person’s moral character. Narvaez also received the 2015 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association for the book.

“Our research in the lab examines the evolved developmental niche—the evolved nest for humans—whose primary characteristics emerged with social mammals more than 30 million years ago,” Narvaez said. She and her team have published several empirical papers about the effects of the evolved nest on wellbeing and morality in children and adults.

In giving the award, University Francisco de Vitoria and the Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation seek academic works that question and explicitly incorporate reflections on the anthropology, epistemology, ethics and meaning that exist within the specific science. Narváez’s book was chosen in the research category.

Narvaez, who joined the Department of Psychology in 2000, has published numerous books and articles on moral cognition, moral development, and moral character. She is a co-director of the interdisciplinary Self, Motivation, and Virtue project and the Developing Virtues in the Practice of Science initiative. She is the exiting executive editor of the Journal of Moral Education and writes the popular Moral Landscapes blog for Psychology Today.

Visit Narvaez's University of Notre Dame website to find a complete list of her publications, educational materials, papers and videos.