About Darcia

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. 

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.