Petra Hesse
Clinical Associate Professor
Dr. Petra Hesse is an associate professor of applied human development at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. Her research interests are children’s emotional development and emotional education, children’s political socialization and political education, and children’s media and media literacy education. Trained in developmental and clinical psychology and international relations, Dr. Hesse teaches courses on the human life cycle, social-emotional development, abnormal and counseling psychology, children and the media, and children’s political socialization.
Dr. Hesse has written for a variety of European and American publications, including Psychosozial, Telemedium, International Journal of Mental Health, Young Children, and Contemporary Psychological Review. In graduate school, she coedited a monograph on emotional development and coauthored several book chapters on emotional development. As a postdoctoral fellow, she wrote about children’s fears of nuclear war. Since joining BU Wheelock, she has written about children’s enemy images in different cultures, about German adolescents before and after reunification, and about children’s reactions to 9/11. Her most recent publications are about media literacy education.
Recent News
Education
PhD, Harvard University
MALD, Tufts University
Vordiplom, Universität Hamburg
Selected Publications
Boos, M., Tiede, J., Grafe, S., and Hesse, P. (2016). Developing students' pedagogical media competencies and intercultural competencies through a U.S.-German partnerships. In, DeAbreu, B. S. and Yildiz, M.N. (Eds.) Global media literacy in a digital age. N.Y.: Peter Lang Publishing.
Hesse, P. (2009). Boston children talk about the presidential election. Newsletter of the Society for the Psychological Study of Peace and Conflict.
Hesse, P. and Lane, F. (2006). "Watching TV is fun and I really like it:" Talking to young children about the experience of watching television. Telemedium: The Journal of Media Literacy.
Hesse, P., and Lane, F. (2003). Learning to read with "Bionic Bunny" and "Box-Head Boy": Integrating literacy and media literacy education in pre-k curriculum. Young Children.
Selected Presentations
Klugman, E. and Hesse, P. Life after the Kindertransport: Perspectives at 90. Paper given at the third international conference on Children and War, July 13 to 15, 2016, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria.
Owusu, S., Durand, T., Hesse, P., Costello, R., Copans, R., and Redman, L. (Social) Media In and Out of the Classroom at a Teachers' College: Challenge or Opportunity? Roundtable presented at Teachers' College Winter Roundtable #33, Cultural Competence in a Digital World, February 26, 2016, New York, N.Y.
Hesse, P., Copans, R., Rice, D., Needham, K., Ponder, K., and Boos, M. Bullying and Cyberbullying Prevention: Local and Global Perspectives; Roundtable presented at International Media Education Summit, November 20, 2015, Boston, MA.
Samuels-Peretz, D., and Hesse, P. Learning from the Holocaust: Local and International Perspectives. Poster presented at the annual conference of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, May 27, 2015, Boston, MA
Hesse, P. and Samuels-Peretz, D. Intergenerational transmission of political trauma: What are some of the mechanisms? Talk presented at the annual conference of the International Society of Political Psychology, July 7, 2014, Rome, Italy.