Jaan Valsiner (born June 29, 1951, in Tallinn, Estonia) is an Estonian-American professor of developmental and cultural psychology, the recipient of Alexander von Humboldt Prize (1995) for his interdisciplinary work on human development[1][2] and 2017 Hans-Kilian-Award winner,[3][4] the Foreign Member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences[5] and the former Niels Bohr Professor[6] of Cultural Psychology (in 2013–2018),[7] currently, a professor at Aalborg University, Denmark.

[9] Jaan Valsiner worked as a professor of psychology in Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts from 1997.

His early studies were in the field of developmental psychology, specifically in the analysis of mother-child interaction patterns and ever since he identifies himself as "cultural psychologist with a consistently developmental axiomatic base".

His other major research interest is the intersection of and interconnections between psychology and semiotics.

[17] He is also the editor of several book series, such as Advances in Cultural Psychology[18] and Annals of Cultural Psychology' '[19]' with Information Age Publishing (IAP), Charlotte, North Carolina, USA; History and Theory of Psychology with Transaction Publishers, USA (sold to Taylor & Francis in 2016 and merged with its Routledge imprint); Cultural Dynamics of Social Representation with Routledge in UK;[20] and one of the founding editors of the IAP Yearbook of Idiographic Science (since 2008)[21]