SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA — The National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) is delighted to announce that Wendy Middlemiss, Ph.D., CFLE, has been named the new editor of Family Relations: Interdisciplinary Journal of Applied Family Science (FR), one of NCFR’s three family-research journals. She will begin her four-year term as editor of the peer-reviewed journal — which publishes basic and applied articles on family forms and issues that are original, innovative, and interdisciplinary — with the publication of its February 2020 issue.

Dr. Middlemiss will succeed current FR Editor Jason D. Hans, Ph.D., CFLE, of the University of Kentucky.

Since 2008 Dr. Middlemiss has been an associate professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of North Texas. Dr. Middlemiss completed her master’s and doctoral degrees in educational psychology at Syracuse University. Her work focuses on the application of social science research to translational education and programming in areas such as safe infant sleep. Her scholarly output includes numerous presentations, book chapters, and refereed journal articles.

Ronald M. Sabatelli, Ph.D., CFLE, a previous editor of FR, noted in his nomination letter that Dr. Middlemiss has already developed “the skills needed to succeed as an editor and, perhaps more importantly, she has a vision of ‘family scholarship,’ based on her conventional and translational research that is needed to creatively energize the scholarship appearing in the journal.” 

Dr. Middlemiss has been a member of NCFR since 1992. She has served extensively in editorial roles for NCFR journals and other leading social science journals. She was guest editor of the FR special issue Biosocial Models of Family Science (Vol. 65.1), a guest co-editor of FR special issue Translational Family Science (Vol. 66.4), and has served on the FR editorial board since 2007.

“Dr. Middlemiss has a clear and compelling vision for the journal,” wrote Joseph G. Grzywacz, Ph.D., in his nomination letter. “[Her role as guest editor of the Biosocial issue] demonstrates [her] ability to think ‘outside the box’ to move the field forward. Both the substance pursued and the internal structure of the issue highlight that [Dr. Middlemiss] can identify important areas currently underdeveloped by Family Science while also staying true to the discipline’s identity as an applied discipline.”

The National Council on Family Relations is the premier professional association for understanding and strengthening families through interdisciplinary research, theory, and practice. NCFR has a membership of nearly 3,000 family researchers, practitioners, and educators. For more information on the National Council on Family Relations or its scholarly publications, visit the NCFR website at ncfr.org.