Dr. Lisa Son (she/her) is a Professor at Barnard College in New York City, New York. She specializes in research on metacognition, spacing, and student study strategies. She earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Dr. Son’s research focuses on how accurately people know the “self,” and on the optimization of long-term retention. She studies metacognitive behavior in a range of populations, including adults, children, and monkeys. Her work has been published in prestigious academic journals, and she has received funding from the U.S. Department of Education and the American Psychological Association for her work with elementary school-aged children. She has earned multiple Fulbright scholarships to pursue research projects in Korea, including two published books in Korean, 메타인지 학습법 (Metacognition: The Thinking Parent Makes the Thinking Child), which focuses on how we think about what we think, and 임포스터 (Impostor: The Masked Parent Makes the Masked Child), focusing on the impostor phenomenon.

Born and raised in the United States, Son has maintained active ties to her ancestral South Korea as an educator and individual. In response to the rise in anti-Asian attacks during the pandemic, Son delivered a speech at a #StopAsianHate rally and spoke in various interviews about the psychology of activism, racial stereotypes, and the challenges that Asian Americans face.

Additional language spoken: Korean (fluent)

Learn more about how Dr. Son fosters metacognition in the classroom in the book Smart Teaching Stronger Learning (Chapter 5).