The Life History Research Society (LHRS) is a dynamic and informal, multi-disciplinary group of scholars who are pursuing prospective longitudinal research examining various aspects of human development. Although some of the first longitudinal studies were founded by epidemiologists, psychiatrists and psychologists, longitudinal data and cohorts are now initiated and used by researchers across domains.

This is in part thanks to the increasing number of important findings from longitudinal studies shared across the last 50 years, which have nicely highlighted their methodological advantages and their contributions to knowledge. However, this also is undoubtedly due to the effort made by key researchers and organisations like the Life History Research (LHRS) over the years in promoting collaborative and interdisciplinary research and in their joint knowledge transfer efforts.

A bit of history of the Life History Research Society

Indeed, the LHRS, formerly known as the Life History Research Society in Psychopathology, was born in the late 1960’s, thanks to the efforts of a group of researchers in different fields, but with a common interest in Longitudinal research. This group of researchers included Sarnoff Mednick (the New School for Social Research), Lee Robins (University of Washington), David F. Ricks (Columbia University), Robert D. Wirt (New School for Social Research), James D. Roff (Eastern Michigan University), Marl H. Pollack (Massachusetts General Hospital; and Harvard Medical School), Saul B. Sells (the Institute of Behavioral Research, Texas Christian University), Merril Roff (University of Minnesota), John S. Strauss (the Psychiatric Assessment Section, National Institute of Mental Health) & William Pollin (National Institute of Drug Abuse), and Alexander Thomas (New York University Medical Center).

The first meetings were relatively small (<50 participants), by invitation only and informal. It was only during the third meeting, held in the Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, New York in 1971, that the Life History Research Society in Psychopathology was formally founded. Over the next decade or two, meetings remained small and by invitation only, but the contribution of this small number of researchers was clear. During the first few decades, papers from each meeting were published as a book or as a series of journal articles, and many influential publications resulted from work promoted and presented at LHRS meetings across the years, including the monographs entitled “Life History Research in Psychopathology” volumes 1 to 4 (Roff & Ricks, 1970; Roff et al., 1972; Ricks et al., 1974; Wirt et al., 1975), which helped establish Developmental psychopathology as a discipline. These were followed by The Origins and Course of Psychpathology (Strauss et al., 1977); Human Functioning in Longitudinal Perspective (Sells et al., 1980); Prospective Studies of Crime and Delinquency (Van Dusen & Mednick, 1983); Life-span Research on the Prediction of Psychopathology (Erlenmeyer-Kimling & Miller, 1986); and Origins of Psychopathology (Ricks & Dohrenwend, 1983).

Soon the baton was taken by other eminent researchers, including Sir Michael Rutter, a British psychiatrist who has often been described as the “father of child psychology” (The Times, 2021), Patricia Cohen (New York State Psychiatric Institute and the Columbia University School of Public Health), Jack Block (UC Berkeley), David Reiss (George Washington University), followed, in the 1990s and 2000s, by eminent researchers like Jane Costello (Duke University), Barbara Maughan (Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London), David P. Farrington (Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University), Terrie Moffit (Duke University), Avshalom Caspi (Duke University), Lisa Serbin (Concordia University) and Sheilagh Hodgins (Université de Montréal).

 During this period, work promoted and presented at LHRS meetings was also compiled in several influential publications that reflected a range of theoretical perspectives and focused on empirical reports drawing on findings from distinguished longitudinal research programmes across the world. These included two special sections of the journal Psychiatry (1988 and 1991, edited by David Reiss); Straight and Devious Pathways from Childhood to Adulthood (Robins & Rutter, 1990); Coercion and Punishment in Long-term Perspectives (McCord, 1995); and Where and When: Geographic and Generational Influences on psychopathology (Cohen et al., 1988). The last of these was a special issue in Criminal Behaviour and Mental health edited by Barbara Maughan and David P. Farrington in 1997.

See the table below for a list of LHRS conferences through the years. This is the information we have managed to track down through early publications and the kind help of many LHRS members – we are especially grateful to Barbara Maughan, Lisa Serbin, Sheilagh Hodgins, Linda Pagani and Jeff Burke for their help. We are still in the process of compiling and verifying this history, so if any of you have any information that could help correct and add to this information (see question marks in the table below), please don’t hesitate to contact us (natalie.castellanos.ryan@umontreal.ca). Thank you!

Table summarising Life History Research Society meetings across the years

Year	City, Country	Institution /organisers
1967	New York, USA (1 day meeting)	David F. Ricks  (Teachers College, Columbia University)
1968	Minneapolis, USA (2-day conference)	Merril Roff (University of Minnesota)
1969	New York, USA	Sarnoff Mednick (New School for Social Research) & David F. Ricks (Teachers College, Columbia University)
1970	Minneapolis, USA	Merril Roff (The Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota)
1971*	Glen Oaks (NY), USA	Max Pollack (Queens College, City University of New York and Hillside Hospital)
1972	St. Louis, USA	Lee Robins (Washington University in St. Louis) & Sarnoff Mednick (New School for Social Research)
1976	Forth Worth, TX, USA?	John S. Strauss?
1979?	New York, USA?	Barbara Snell Dohrenwend (Columbia University School of Public Health)
1980	St. Louis, USA	Lee Robins (Washington University in St. Louis)
1983?	?	Katherine Van Dusen & Sarnoff Mednick?
1985	Montreal, Canada	Alex Schwartzman, Lisa Serbin & Debbie Moskowitz (Concordia University)
1986?	North Carolina, USA	Jane Costello (Duke University)
1987	St. Louis, USA	Lee Robins (Washington University in St. Louis)
1988	Cape Cod, USA	Patricia Cohen (Columbia University)
1990	Keystone or Denver, USA	?
1992	Philadelphia, USA	Joan McCord (Temple University)
1993	New York, USA	Patricia Cohen (Columbia University)
1995	Monterrey Cal., USA	Sarnoff Mednick (University of Southern California)
1996	London, UK	Barbara Maughan (Institute de Psychiatry, KCL) and David Farrington (University of Cambridge)
1998	Seattle, USA	Richard F. Catalano & David Hawkins (School of Social Work, University of Washington, Seattle)
1999	Kauai, HI, USA	Michael D. Maltz (Dept of Criminal Justice; University of Illinois at Chicago)
2001	St. Michael’s, Maryland, USA	Patricia Cohen (Columbia University), Sheppard Kellam and Margaret Ensminger (Johns Hopkins University)
2002	New York, USA	???
2004	Charleston, SC, USA	Ron Prinz (University of South Carolina)
2005	Portland, Oregon	Deborah Capaldi and Tom Dishion (Oregon Social Learning Center)
2007	Atlanta	Carol Worthman & Patti Brennan (Emory University)
2008	Bad Nauheim, Germany	Sheila Hodgins (Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London)
2010	Montreal, Canada	Mark Ellenbogen (Concordia University)
2012	Richmond, UK	Sara Jaffee & Barbara Maughan (Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London)
2014	Pittsburgh, USA	Alison Hipwell and Jeffrey Burke (Pittsburgh University)
2016	Amsterdam, Netherlands	Hanneke Creemers and Machteld Hoeve (University of Amsterdam)
2018	Paris, France	Maria Melchor &  Judith Van Der Waerden (Sorbonne Université, INSERM)
2022	Oxford, UK	Lucy Bowes (Oxford University)
2024	Montreal, Canada	Natalie Castellanos-Ryan & Isabelle Ouellet-Morin (Université de Montréal), Marie-Claude Geoffroy and Caroline Temcheff (McGill University)

*It is believed that Sarnoff Mednick, David F. Ricks, Merril Roff and Max Pollack were who started the LHRS meetings, but The LHRS is officially founded only during the third meeting in 1971.

Examples of influential publications related to past LHRS meetings

COHEN, P., SLOMKOWSKI, C. & ROBINS, L.N. (Eds) (1997). Where and When: Geographic and Generational Influences on Psychopathology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, in press.

Colman I, Murray J, Abbott R A, Maughan B, Kuh D, Croudace T J et al. (2009) Outcomes of conduct problems in adolescence: 40 year follow-up of national cohort, British Medical Journal, 338 :a2981 doi:10.1136/bmj.a2981

ERLENMEYER-KIMLING, L. & MILLER, N.E. (1986). Life-span Research on the Prediction of Psychopathology. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

JESSOR, R. & JESSOR, S.L. (1977). Problem Behavior and Psychosocial Development – A Longitudinal Study of Youth. New York: Academic Press.

Lewinsohn, P.M., Rohde, P., Seeley, J.R., Klein, D.N., & Gotlib, I.H. (2000). Natural course of adolescent major depressive disorder in a community sample: predictors of recurrence in young adults. American Journal of Psychiatry, 157, 1584– 1591.

Maughan, B. and Farrington, D.P. (1997), Editorial. Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, 7, 261-264. https://doi.org/10.1002/cbm.189

MAUGHAN, B. & FARRINGTON, MCCORD, J. (Ed.) (1995). Coercion and Punishment in Long-term Perspectives. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Maughan, B., Rowe, R., Messer, J., Goodman, R. and Meltzer, H. (2004), Conduct Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder in a national sample: developmental epidemiology. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45, 609-621. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.00250.x

Maughan, B., Stafford, M., Shah, I., & Kuh, D. (2014). Adolescent conduct problems and premature mortality: follow-up to age 65 years in a national birth cohort. Psychological Medicine, 44, 1077– 1086.

REISS, D. (Ed.) (1988). Special section: Delinquency, Drug Abuse and Alcoholism. Psychiatry 51.

REISS, D. (Ed.) (1991). Special section: Conduct Disorders in Childhood. Psychiatry 54.

RICKS, D. F. & DOHRENWEND, B. (Eds) (1983). Origins of Psychopathology: Problems in Research and Public Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

RICKS, D. F., THOMAS, A. & ROFF, M. (Eds) (1974). Life History Research in Psychopathology, Vol. 3. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

ROBINS, L. N. & RUTTER, M. (Eds) (1990). Straight and Devious Pathways from Childhood to Adulthood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

ROFF, M. & RICKS, D. F. (Eds) (1970). Life History Research in Psychopathology, Vol. 1. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

ROFF, M., ROBINS, L. N. & POLLACK, M. (Eds) (1972) Life History Research in Psychopathology, Vol. 2. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Rutter, M. (2010) Child and adolescent psychiatry: past scientific achievements and challenges for the future. European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 19, 689–703 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-010-0111-y

RUTTER, M., DUNN, J., PLOMIN, R., SIMONOFF, E., PICKLES, A., MAUGHAN, B., . . . EAVES, L. (1997). Integrating nature and nurture: Implications of person–environment correlations and interactions for developmental psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology, 9, 335-364. doi:10.1017/S0954579497002083

SELLS, S.B., CRANDALL, R., ROFF, M., STRAUSS, J.S. & POLLIN, W. (1980). Human Functioning in Longitudinal Perspectives: Studies of Normal and Psychopathic Populations. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins.

STRAUSS, J.S., BABIGIAN, H.M. & ROFF, M. (1977). The Origins and Course of Psychopathology. New York: Plenum.

VAN DUSEN, K. T. & MEDNICK, S. A. (Eds) (1983). Prospective Studies of Crime and Delinquency. Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff.

WIRT, R.D., WINOKUR, G. & ROFF, M. (1975). Life History Research in Psychopathology, Vol. 4. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Other reference in text:

“Professor Sir Michael Rutter obituary”. The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 4 November 2023.

More to come…

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