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she/her

Hana Mahyoub is primarily interested in the linguistic and cultural variables that have historically shaped American perceptions of foreign conflicts and populations. As such, she has a highly interdisciplinary academic background. She received her bachelor's in psychology from James Madison University, has written for Muslim Mental Health research and education non-profits, and studied Asian & Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford.

She uses multiple methodological and disciplinary lenses to explore how, when, and what forms of covert rhetoric influence the way W.E.I.R.D., or hegemonic, populations respond to need in the developing world. Most recently, this has looked like experimentally examining the relationship between essentialism and attitudes towards foreign atrocities.

Research Interests: Social essentialism, collective action, intergroup helping, propaganda studies, history of Islamic Sciences, narrative inquiry, quantitative methods

Nata is interested in exploring how women in rural Indonesian villages engage with ideological beliefs about who they are / who they are not and their capacities that stem from religious, colonial, and capitalist histories and realities. She is also interested in how current social movements involve these women in their efforts; and what insights we may get about collective action through digging in the archives. Her current active space of exploration is in the gathering and dissemination of research findings through creative means such as zine-making, music composition, poetry, and so on.

Research Interests: resistance; feminist psychology; archival research; decolonial psychology; participatory action research; crip theory; arts-based research

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Alisha is scholar-activist, community organizer, and artist. They hold a masters in Community Social Psychology from The University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Guided by decolonial and transnational feminist praxes, their scholarship focuses on the affective dimensions of resistance, solidarity, and collective struggles across transnational contexts. More specifically, they are interested in how members of communities navigating interconnected crises cultivate and navigate grief, rage, hope, love, and care. Their work on participatory and arts-based research projects with youth in California and cultural workers in India, South America, and Africa shapes their commitment to scholar-activism grounded in epistemic justice and relationality. Across academic and community-based work, they practice art as collective healing, radical listening, and political imagination. 

Research Interests: Decolonial and Transnational Feminisms, Decoloniality, Anti-Imperialism, Critical Pedagogy, Critical Participatory Action Research, Critical Ethnography, Arts-Based Research Methods, Epistemic Justice

she/her

Hannah holds an MA in General Psychology from CCNY, where she taught courses on statistics, persuasion, and interdisciplinary social sciences. Her research interest sits at the intersection of psychology, structural inequality, and mental health. Her previous projects explored social class literacy in counselor training, the various dimensions of “moving up” for historically marginalized communities, and how economic precarity, institutional exclusion, and asymmetrical power dynamics impact adjunct well-being. Hannah is also interested in constructions of expertise and authority, assumptions of good faith and credibility, and the illusion of neutrality that (at least in part) normalizes state-sanctioned surveillance and oppression. This intertwines with her interest in the psychological relationship among legal status, race, and class and its connection to the prison-industrial complex. More generally, she is curious about how stereotypes, propaganda, rhetoric, and storytelling shape belief systems, public perceptions, and policy. Hannah was born at home in Brooklyn and lives in Flatbush.

Research Interests: structural inequality and mental health; social class and mobility; psychology of working; belief systems; cognitive dissonance; intersectionality; critical quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, and participatory action research

she/her

Kendra Krueger is an intersectional scientist and educator raised by artists in New York’s Lower East Side. With bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of Colorado Boulder), she integrates play, mindfulness, and social ecology into teaching science, fostering both analytical and emotional intelligence. As the STEM Education and Outreach Manager at CUNY’s Advanced Science Research Center she oversees The IlluminationSpace, an immersive museum like- learning center and co- founded The CUNY Community Sensor Lab, a space for Do-It-Yourself community science. She also curates and collaborates on multimedia projects and installations that explore archetypes of science and the psyche through her platform 4LoveandScience.

Research Interests: Enviornmental psychology, ecopsychology, critical consciousness, ecological consciousness, afro-futurism, afro-cosmologies, STEM education, Community Based Participatory Action Research, community science

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I grew up in Delhi. I am trying to understand and articulate the ways in which dominant perceptions travel in society and within our bodies. I am also doing archival research and interviews to study unlikely women's collectives in interstitial spaces of post-independence India and today. My inquiries are guided by abolition-feminist theories; I am curious how women find each other at different intersections of society and navigate everyday harms, negotiating and creating possibilities for survival, desire and local change in the face of interlocking systems of oppression.

Research Interests: Feminist epistemologies, Perception and power, Archival work, Grounded analysis

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she/her

Mia is a participatory researcher, facilitator, and student. Her work explores participatory governance and non-reformist reform. She is especially interested in how communities can imagine and build alternative models of care, outside of the family policing system. Mia loves cooking, walking, and filling up small apartments with friends and family.

Research Interests: Liberation psychology, non-reformist reform, participatory governance, community-based methods

she/her/siya

Beatriz A. Torre (Bea) is an international student from the Philippines, where she first became interested in social psychology and feminist and LGBTQ psychology. Bea holds a master’s degree in psychology from the University of the Philippines where she has also worked as an assistant professor. Bea was a founding member and former chair of the LGBT Psychology Special Interest Group of the Psychological Association of the Philippines. Her past work includes research, public education, and organizing on issues ranging from LGBTQ+ rights and well-being; Filipino women’s experiences of everyday sexism, gender-based violence, and seeking help for reproductive and sexual health concerns; and physical activity participation and motivation in Filipino communities. Bea’s current research interests include Filipino migrant women’s migration journeys and how these shape their sexual subjectivities; as well as Filipino migrants’ experiences of solidarity-building within and beyond movements for migrant justice.

Research Interests: feminist psychology; queer psychology; participatory action research; decolonial psychology; critical health psychology

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she/her

Carlyn is an artist, educator and critically engaged scholar/researcher from Durham, North Carolina whose work is grounded in a commitment to creative practices as a form of critical inquiry and social transformation. She uses visual and creative methods, including photography, collage and self-portraiture, alongside collaborative inquiry and personal narratives to explore experiences that extend beyond what can be captured through words alone. Her artistic practice is not separate from her research- it is a parallel way of asking questions, making meaning, and examining how knowledge is produced using a different set of tools. As a critical scholar, she is committed to exploring how research is situated within historical, societal, and political contexts to interrogate power structures and injustices. Carlyn’s work is grounded in a commitment to situating those most affected as the most significant and essential narrators of their lived experiences. Her methodological approach is rooted in collaborative and participatory practices, consent and trauma-informed epistemologies and slow ethics, and aims to expand the ways in which knowledges are produced and shared, and challenge whose and what kind of knowledges are deemed valid.  Her work reimagines research as a creative and ethical practice that generates new knowledge, fosters new relationships, and opens possibilities for meaningful change.

Research Interests: visual and creative methodologies, trauma-informed and consent epistemologies, ethical research, participatory action research, Interpersonal violence prevention and education, critical feminist ethnography

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he/him/his

Christopher is a passionate and experienced scholar with over ten years of experience in Counseling and Diversion Prevention, Programming, Policing Alternatives, Data Analytics, Trauma-Informed Care, and Harm Reduction,with a distinct and peculiar expertise in social work and divinity background. Christopher is a second-year Critical psychology Ph.D. student. Concentrating on developing research that explores and examines the needs of persons of marginalized experiences at the intersections of race, religion, mental health, and queer studies; while remaining committed to cultivating safe spaces on a macro-level or micro-level; developing partnerships between the academy, pulpits, and public square. Utilizing creative and cooperative collaboration with outsourcing resources to implement holistic and therapeutic exercises with clients or persons who may wrestle with the intersectional complexities of identity, race, and gender.

Research Interests: Participatory Research, Critical Consciousness, Race, Religion, Queer Studies, Trauma-informed Care

she/her

Carla was born and raised in Chile. She holds a bachelor's in psychology from Universidad de Chile and a master's in Gender Studies from Central European University. Carla's interests include feminist and queer activism, as well as the relationship between social movements and memory. She has conducted research on intersectional practices within feminist activism during the 2018 social movement in Chile. Her current work involves archival research on how queer activists resisted the Pinochet dictatorship and challenged the transition to democracy.

Research Interests: queer studies, social movements, collective memory, qualitative methods

she/her

History of psychoanalysis, translation, and post-monolingualism; the social reproductive labor of mothers and children; transitional objects and transitional spaces.

Research Interests: Free Associative Narrative Inquiry, qualitative methods, oral history and interview

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he/him/his

João is an international student from Brazil. He holds a bachelor's degree in Psychology from PUC-Campinas (Brazil) and a Masters' degree in Family and Gender Studies from the University of Lisbon (Portugal). He is interested in understanding how processes of critical consciousness are negotiated and enacted within increasingly conservative political settings, particularly in the form of homonationalist discourses, practices, and policies. João’s recent work has focused on the intersections between queer diaspora, politics of belonging, and systems of support and solidarity.

Research Interests: Qualitative Research, Queer Migrations, Qualitative Network Analysis, Transnational Research, Epistemic Justice

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she/her

Yasmeen El Gerbi's research examines how people navigate, interpret, and respond to social and political change in post-revolution contexts, with a focus on Libya and the broader Middle East and North Africa. She is particularly interested in civic engagement, civil society, public policy, and how people navigate social and political change and take action within layered and unequal relationships among civic, state, and transnational institutions.

Her work draws on qualitative, narrative, and temporally attentive approaches to study how meanings and possibilities for action develop across changing and constrained social and political contexts. Her broader research trajectory brings together political and social psychology, civic engagement, and social transformation in post-conflict and contested settings.

Research Interests: Qualitative methods; dynamic narrative inquiry; participatory action research; ethnography; political and social psychology; civic engagement and civil society; youth; global-local intersections; international and transnational organizations; social and political change

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she/her/hers

Aiyana’s current research explores how people develop, negotiate, and resist narratives of protection. She specifically traces how carceral- imperialism moves through varied sites of collective memory.

Grounded in Liberation Psychology, Aiyana privileges participatory and grassroots, community-engaged research approaches. Aiyana’s research has primarily adopted qualitative methods such as long-form interviews, focus groups, and surveys.

Her published works explore (1) how psychology has aligned with the State to delegitimize Black people’s protests of State violence, and (2) how survivor-activists navigated the NY parole application process and interpret traditionally-validated research approaches to studying dehumanization.

In 2020, Aiyana earned a double B.A. from Williams College (Political Science and Psychology, and an honors concentration in Africana Studies). In 2024, Aiyana earned an M.A. and an M.Phil in Psychology from the Graduate Center at City University of New York.

Research Interests: counter-recruitment, propaganda studies, intergenerational storytelling, collective memory, abolitionisms, anti-imperialism, qualitative methods, PAR, critical race studies

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she/her/hers/ella

Amour Castillo is a passionate advocate for prison abolition and a researcher dedicated to working with and learning from incarcerated people and their loved ones. She earned her Master of Philosophy in Psychology in September and holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Hamilton College. Her work uses a mixed methods approach that integrates qualitative and quantitative inquiry to explore how relationships endure and transform across systems of confinement.

As a Project Manager at The Fortune Society, Amour leads two collaborative studies with Einstein and Montefiore, advancing community-driven research to improve the lives of people impacted by incarceration. A poet and fantasy novelist, she believes in building a world grounded in compassion, imagination, and joy. Through her research and advocacy, Amour strives to foster connection, healing, and the possibility of liberation for all.

Research Interests: relationality across incarceration, participatory research, mixed methods, abolitionist psychology, and how incarcerated people and their loved ones create and sustain connection within systems of confinement

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she/her

Natalia was born and raised in northern Mexico. She earned a BA in Psychology at the University of New Mexico in 2015. She originally trained in clinical psychology researching trauma disorders. She transitioned to Critical Social Personality Psychology to explore qualitative methods and ontological questions of bodily experience. Currently, she teaches psychology courses at Hunter College and an advanced seminar at John Jay College. Her research interests include embodied knowledge, affect theory, queering, restorative justice, and innovative critical pedagogical approaches to teaching.

Research Interests: Natalia is particularly interested in how affect arises in the body, how it is experienced, and how affective ways of knowing can bypass limiting social labels that constrict experience. Her research draws from Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of affect and deterritorialization, aiming to uncover deeper insights into human experience beyond spoken language.

he/him

Roderick Hurley is a Barbados-born scholar, educator, musician, runner, and coach. His dissertation examines how Black male students and instructors across CUNY understand success and belonging, and how the cultural gifts they bring from their communities move through classrooms and institutions. He teaches psychology at the College of Staten Island and works with the Futures Initiative at the Graduate Center, supporting FI's work in critical pedagogy, student support, and institutional change. Much of his work comes back to a simple question: what happens when people are allowed to show up as whole people? Rod is interested in what we learn from family, community, culture, relationships, creativity, and movement; how those things shape what we bring into classrooms and institutions; and what we carry back out. He is especially interested in the roles of music, culture, and running in identity, connection, and belonging.

Research Interests: Black men in higher education, public higher education, cultural gifts, belonging, critical pedagogy, Critical Race Theory, Community Cultural Wealth, critical autoethnography, music, running.

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Ciudad de México (1986). Poet and Dramatist. Studied Social Psychology at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish from New York University. Blurring the line between poetry and theory, Clairette pushes the boundaries of empirical research. In her poetry collection "De la boca de mi madre", her theater script "Nunca estás y estás", and her PhD dissertation "Clairette Haiat(i)", she explores other possibilities of being and knowing by situating glimpses of the (pre-colonial) Muslim Jewish world –still here– in Latin America / outside of the Global North.

Research Interests: Poem-theory, Arab Jews / Muslim Jews, language-in-the-making, Radical Empiricism, language as gestures, gestures

she/her

Britney's research interests vary from mass incarceration to spirituality/faith, juvenile (in)justice, and Black adolescent development. They are all rooted in her desire to highlight the power, altruism, and solidarity that lives within the Black community while also using her work to fight oppressive systems that threaten it, such as the juvenile (in)justice system. She holds a BA from the University of Michigan where she studied Biopsychology, Cognition, & Neuroscience and Creative Writing & Literature. Her studies and involvement in organizations such as the Prison Creative Arts Project has sparked her interest and advocacy for arts-based alternatives to youth incarceration. Britney is a part of the Facilitator Team with the Youth Justice Research Collaborative and a Research Associate for the Public Science Project. She is Ford Fellow and a Mellon Humanities PublicsLab Fellow.

Research Interests: juvenile (in)justice and its impact on Black adolescent development, arts-based alternatives to youth incarceration, power, altruism and solidarity within the Black community

she/her

Christine holds an EdM in Counseling Psychology from Rutgers University and an MSW from New York University. In addition, Christine is a psychoanalyst in private practice in NYC.  Christine's interests include the role of the social/other in queer embodiment as well as the social construction of psychoanalytic space and time.  She is interested in focusing her research on how the social world informs psychoanalytic notions and uses of spatiality and temporality and how such constructs can serve to shift psychoanalysis both conceptually and clinically toward a more inclusive anti-oppressive stance.  

Research Interests: social construction of psychoanalytic space and time

she/her/hers

Bio: After getting a master's in Clinical Psychology from the University of Paris 7, France, Katia Henrys went back to her home country Haiti, where she practiced as a clinician and as a trainer in different settings: Research centers, International NGOs, local NGOs, the State University. As a Fulbright recipient, Katia came to the Graduate Center, CUNY, and obtained a master's in Women's and Gender Studies. Her master was focused on the discourses on abortion rights in Haiti. For her a Ph.D. in Critical Social-Personality Psychology is interested in trauma and healing in medical settings for women who are sexually assaulted. Currently, this aspect of her work is centered on partnerships with nurses in Haiti. Katia's interest on qualitative inquiries is also being sharpen with the work she does with oral histories and transnational work with feminist activists with strong attention to ethics. 

Research Interests: Feminist approach in qualitative research