Louise Hawkley

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Louise Hawkley is a Senior Research Scientist at NORC at the University of Chicago, after more than a decade with the Psychology Department at The University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the role of psychosocial factors, particularly loneliness and social isolation, in explaining individual differences in health and well-being in older adulthood. Her current work on the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP) is funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA). She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. 

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Prior to her position at the NORC, she was Director of the Social Neuroscience Laboratory in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago where she was an investigator on NIA-funded studies of loneliness and its antecedents and consequences in middle to older adulthood. She was also a co-investigator on a randomized clinical trial funded by the Department of the Army to evaluate the effects of a social resilience intervention on Soldiers' job performance and health outcomes. She has given invited lectures and panel presentations for academic and service institutions in Spain, Hungary, France, England, as well as the United States. Hawkley is a member of the American Society on Aging and the Gerontological Society of America and serves on the editorial board for Research on Aging and Social Science & Medicine. Dr. Hawkley is an international speaker and served as an expert witness for the solitary confinement case, Ashker v. Governor of California, 2015.