Erica Burman (born 1960) is a critical development psychologist based in the United Kingdom. While little known in the developmental psychology research community, her work has been a conceptual resource for critiques of the field, notably feminist perspectives on the connections between different forms of oppression, and methodological debates in psychology. Developmental psychology Burman’s 1994 work, Deconstructing Developmental Psychology, provided a critical response to mainstream theories of child development, and drew upon feminist theory to show how this aspect of psychology serves to regulate family behavior, marginalize working class and minority ethnic women and pathologise their experience as mothers. The book covers the spectrum of dominant approaches in psychology, and finds each of them wanting. The specific cultural assumptions that give rise to different forms of psychology are examined, and the book provides new ways of thinking about the position of children in modern society. Following this book much of Burman’s research has been devoted to representations of children, and to the connections between different kinds of "development". She has continued critical examination of the role of developmental psychology, and her work turned to study the way images of children are used in connection with the "developing" world. She has also focused her research on the question of how such images of women and children hold in place models of the "progress" of the development of the nation state. Feminist research and methodology Although feminist research has been a central concern of Burman’s writing on developmental psychology, she has questioned cultural assumptions in "second wave" feminism, and she has often drawn on anti-racist debates. She has drawn attention to the way the position of women is closely connected with the position of cultural minorities. Burman is best known as a developmental psychologist and theorist of women’s studies, but many of her publications have been concerned with radical developments in methodology (see, for example, her analysis of the way debates on child labor can be used to show the limits of mainstream models in developmental psychology in the 2006 FQS online reference). Her study of different ways of carrying out research has been a powerful resource for feminist psychologists, but beyond that the impact has been felt in "discourse analysis" and in "critical psychology" (see for example the 2004 DAOL online reference) and in critical mental health. She is sometimes criticized for being too political because her work crosses academic disciplinary