Barbara Rogoff is UC Santa Cruz Foundation Distinguished Professor of Psychology and held the University of California Presidential Chair. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Society, the American Anthropological Association, the American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association. Barbara Rogoff has been a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a Kellogg Fellow, a Spencer Fellow, and an Osher Fellow of the Exploratorium.

She served as Editor of Human Development and of the Newsletter of the Society for Research in Child Development, Study Section member for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and committee member on the Science of Learning for the National Academy of Science. She was selected to give the 2004 UC Santa Cruz Faculty Research Lecture.

Her book Apprenticeship in Thinking (1990) received the Scribner Award from the American Educational Research Association, Learning Together: Children and Adults in a School Community (2004) was finalist for the Maccoby Award of the American Psychologist Association, and The Cultural Nature of Human Development (2003) won the William James Book Award of the American Psychological Association.