Dr. Madigan holds a Canada Research Chair in Determinants of Child Development. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Calgary, a member of the Owerko Centre at the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute and an Associate Member of the Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research and Education.

Dr. Madigan's research seeks to isolate central determinants of child and youth development. She is primarily focused on understanding how social stressors and adversities can influence child social, emotional, and cognitive development. She is also interested in understanding why some mothers, children, and youth show resilience to these stressors and adversities while others remain vulnerable. Her research uses a variety of methods (e.g., observational assessments, survey data, structured interviews) and capitalizes on multiple statistical methods as a function of the question under consideration (e.g., meta-analyses, mediation and moderation, trajectory analyses, multilevel models, path analyses, and individual participant data reviews).