Pamela Ebstyne King, Ph.D.

Dr. Pamela Ebstyne King joined Fuller Theological Seminary as Assistant Professor of Marital and Family Studies in 2008, after serving at the School of Psychology (now the School of Psychology and Marriage and Family Therapy) for eight years as an adjunct and research professor. In 2014, she was named Peter L. Benson Associate Professor of Applied Developmental Science. Dr. King is the head faculty member at the Thrive Center for Human Development.

Her primary academic interests are applied research at the intersection of human thriving and spiritual development. Her work combines psychology, theology, and community engagement to further understand what contexts and personal strengths enable people to thrive in different settings. She is particularly interested in the role of spirituality in that process. To this end, she has led in building an empirical field of study of religious and spiritual development within developmental psychology. She is recognized in ecumenical settings for facilitating dialogue, scholarship, and empirical research that bridges diverse perspectives of transcendence and psychological process that leads to human transformation and thriving. Her work on telos is noted to provide an interdisciplinary framework for human thriving and flourishing from different philosophical, theological, and cultural perspectives and to provide a structure for understanding practical concepts like purpose, vocation, and joy.

Dr. King is coauthor of The Reciprocating Self: Human Development in Theological Perspective, coeditor of The Handbook of Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence, and coauthor of inaugural chapters on research on religious and spiritual development in the seventh edition of the Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, the Handbook of Adolescent Psychology, and the Handbook of Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. She has co-edited special issues on religious and spiritual development in Applied Developmental Science, the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, and Journal of Research on Adolescence. She has served on the editorial boards of Developmental Psychology, Journal of Positive Psychology, and Applied Developmental Science. Her work is widely published in peer-reviewed journals in the subdisciplines of developmental psychology, psychology of religion and spirituality, positive psychology, and integration of psychology and Christian theology. Dr. King is a member of the Society for Research on Adolescents, Society for Research on Child Development, and Division 36 of the American Psychological Association.