Professor Peter H. Kahn, Jr.

Peter H. Kahn, Jr., Ph.D. is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. He is also Co-Director of The Mina Institute (Covelo, CA), an organization that seeks to promote, from an ethical perspective, the human relationship with nature and technology. He is on the Editorial Board of Children, Youth, and Environments (CYE).
 
His current research, funded by the National Science Foundation, examines what happens when technology mediates the human experience of nature. Project areas include the human-robotic relationship (e.g., children’s relationships with robotic pets), plasma displays of real-time local nature (e.g., inside offices), and a computer simulation model (“UrbanSim”) for integrated land use and transportation planning of urban development.
 
Peter authored The Human Relationship with Nature: Development and Culture and Nature and Moral Development, coauthored What is a human? — Toward psychological benchmarks in the field of human-robot interaction, Robotic pets in the lives of preschool children, The watcher and the watched: Social judgments about privacy in a public place, Water, air, fire, and earth — A developmental study in Portugal of environmental moral reasoning, Reinstating modernity in social science research — or — The status of Bullwinkle in a post-postmodern era, On nature and environmental education: Black parents speak from the inner city, and Developmental Psychology and the Biophilia Hypothesis: Children’s Affiliation with Nature, and coedited Children and Nature: Psychological, Sociocultural, and Evolutionary Investigations.
 
Peter earned his BA in English in 1981, his MS in Education in 1984 and his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology (Human Development) in 1988 — all at the University of California, Berkeley.