Philippe Rochat was born and raised in Geneva, Switzerland. He was trained by Jean Piaget and his close collaborators and received his Ph.D. from the University of Geneva, Switzerland in 1984. He then began a series of Post Doctoral internships in the United States at Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Johns Hopkins University. During this time, he conducted research on action, perception, and cognitive development in human infants.
He taught and did research in developmental psychology at the University of Massachusetts, and joined the faculty at Emory University in Atlanta in the 1990s, where he is currently a professor of psychology and head of the Emory Infant and Child Lab. A 2006-2007 John Simon Guggenheim fellow, Rochat has published 5 single author books (one currently in press), 2 edited and 1 co-edited volume as well as many scholarly articles on infant and child development (see the complete list of publications and PDFs at (http://www.psychology.emory.edu/cognition/rochat/lab/Rochat.html). The main focus of his research is on the early sense of self, emerging self-concept, the development of social cognition and relatedness, and the emergence of a moral sense during the preschool years in children from all over the world. Philippe Rochat and collaborators’ research emphasizes differences in populations growing up in highly contrasted cultural environments, as well as highly contrasted socio-economic circumstances.
