Nansook Park, PhD, NCSP, is a professor of psychology, director of Michigan Positive Psychology Center at the University of Michigan, and a nationally certified school psychologist. She is one of leading scholars in the field of positive psychology. Her work in collaboration with the late Dr. Chris Peterson in studying character strengths and virtues is considered the most ambitious undertaking within the field of positive psychology.
Park has taken the lead in developing ways to assess character strengths among children and youth and in conducting cross-cultural investigations. She also has been working with US Army for Soldier resilience and psychological fitness project including development of the Global Assessment Tool. Her work had impact on research and practices in various settings including health care, education, business, and military.
Her research focuses on the promotion of health and well-being across the life-span in different culture settings. She is interested in the development, correlates, mechanisms, and consequences of character strengths and virtues, happiness, positive experiences, life meaning and purpose, positive relationships, and positive leadership, and especially their role in resiliency, well-being, health, family functioning, education and work. She is also interested in strength-based practice at school, work and health care settings.
Her studies of children and youth well-being and character strengths have been recognized by several national and international honors. She has over 100 scholarly publications and has given numerous invited lectures and workshops in leading institutions and conferences in 16 nations including China, Japan, Australia, Italy, Spain, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. She is a member of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) steering committee and the Annenberg/Sunnylands Commission on Positive Youth Development, a Fellow at Association for Psychological Science, and an Associate Editor for Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, and a Consulting Editor for The Journal of Positive Psychology.
She did her graduate work both in Korea (MA: Yonsei University, Seoul) and the United States (Ph.D.: University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC) and has a research and practice background in clinical and school psychology.
