Professor Gordon Harold is the inaugural director of the Andrew and Virginia Rudd Centre for Adoption Research and Practice at the University of Sussex, which looks at the major challenges facing children and families in transition as well as specific challenges faced by adopted children and their families.

Previously, Gordon was professor of developmental psychopathology and quantitative behaviour genetics at the University of Leicester. Before that, he spent three years (2008–11) as Alexander McMillan chair, professor of psychology and director of the Centre for Research on Children and Families at the University of Otago in New Zealand, having served as lecturer to professor in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University (1998–2008). His research interests focus on the role of the family as a context for understanding children’s normal and abnormal psychological development, the genetic origins of children’s emotional and behavioural development, and policy and practice applications of research relating to family influences on children.