Bruce Fuller, a sociologist, delves into how families, civic activists, and policy makers lift the learning and well-being of children. He often focuses on the growth of young children, including the tension between large institutions and the varying ideals of child rearing pressed by diverse parents. Fuller's earlier book, Standardized Childhood(link is external), reports on the four-century old debate over how to nurture and teach young children in modernizing societies. He explores whether one regimented form of early education speaks to parents and kids in pluralist societies.

Before coming to Berkeley, Fuller was a research sociologist at the World Bank and taught at Harvard's School of Education. His new book, Organizing Locally, is forthcoming from University of Chicago Press.