Maria Cancian

Maria Cancian is a professor and former dean at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. Her research considers the dynamic between public policies and family well-being — both how policies shape choices and outcomes for families, and how family change creates new challenges and opportunities for public policy. Ongoing projects analyze the interactions of the child welfare and child support systems, as well as the implications of multiple partner fertility and immigration policy for family organization and policy. She has advised local, state and federal agencies on policy initiatives designed to improve outcomes, especially for low-income and otherwise vulnerable families. 

Cancian joined Georgetown University as dean of the McCourt School in 2019, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was a Kellett professor and served as associate dean for social sciences and fiscal initiatives and as director of the Institute for Research on Poverty. She also served as Senior Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy for the HHS Administration for Children and Families in the Obama Administration, as a Casey Family Programs senior fellow, a W. T. Grant Foundation distinguished fellow in residence at the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation and a visiting fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. 

Cancian is the former president of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and was elected as the 2018 John Kenneth Galbraith fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and as a 2023 fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She received her doctorate in economics from the University of Michigan.

2024 CV