Our Faculty

Many faculty in Critical Psychology at the Graduate Center also serve as faculty at other CUNY campuses (e.g., Hunter, Queens, Brooklyn, College of Staten Island, Kingsborough Community College, and John Jay College of Criminal Justice). They draw from a number of disciplines and interdisciplinary programs (e.g., anthropology, sociology, education, social work, geography, American studies, gender/women’s studies, and Africana studies). In addition, our program often benefits from visiting faculty from other universities in the USA and abroad. All doctoral and visiting faculty are encouraged to participate fully in the life of the program as advisors, teachers, and research supervisors for Ph.D. students.

Photo of Michelle Fine and Brett Stoudt in the CUNY GC City University of New York Graduate Center, critical psychology faculty
Black and white photo of Michelle Fine, Maria Torre and graduates of the critical psychology program at the CUNY GC, City University of New York Graduate Center
Maria Torre and Michelle Fine, critical psychology faculty, CUNY GC, City University of New York Graduate Center
Meet our faculty

Core Faculty

Affiliated Faculty

Our Students

  • Hana Mahyoub

    Hana S. Mahyoub

    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

  • Kendra A Krueger

    Kendra A Krueger

    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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  • Shibani Chakravorty

    she/her

    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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  • Beatriz A. Torre, Critical Psychology student at the CUNY GC, City University of New York Graduate Center

    Beatriz A. Torre

    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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  • Carlyn Wright-Eakes, Critical Psychology student at the CUNY GC, City University of New York Graduate Center

    Carlyn Wright-Eakes

    she/her

    Carlyn is an artist and educator from Durham, North Carolina. Carlyn’s research is centered on integrating psychology, education, arts and social justice. Her previous work experiences range from theater with women in prison in Connecticut, youth work across Central America, portraiture with women in prison in Chile, art and storytelling with survivors of interpersonal violence across North Carolina, to creative mapmaking with men on death row in the United States. She has experience working in international NGO’s, higher education institutions and non-profit management. Carlyn maintains her individual art practice and enjoys a variety of mediums from ink, wax, collage, book making, jewelry, and mixed media sculpture.

    Research Interests: participatory action research, visual and creative methodologies, intersectional critical analysis, trauma-informed practices, ethical research, Interpersonal violence and experiences of survival, resistance and healing

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  • Christopher Jackson, Critical Psychology student at the CUNY GC, City University of New York Graduate Center

    Christopher Jackson

    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

  • Carla Gonzalez Paul, Critical Psychology student at the CUNY GC, City University of New York Graduate Center

    Carla González Paul

    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

  • Hiji Nam, Critical Psychology student at the CUNY GC, City University of New York Graduate Center

    Hiji Nam

    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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  • Joao Carvalho, Critical Psychology student at the CUNY GC, City University of New York Graduate Center

    João Carvalho

    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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  • Yasmeen El Gerbi, Critical Psychology student at the CUNY GC, City University of New York Graduate Center

    Yasmeen El Gerbi

    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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  • Aiyana Le Porter-Cash, Critical Psychology student at the CUNY GC, City University of New York Graduate Center

    Aiyana Le Porter-Cash

    she/her/hers

    Aiyana’s current research explores how people develop, negotiate, and struggle around notions of protection. She specifically focuses on carceralism and imperialism moving across specific sites of collective memory. Grounded in Liberation Psychology, Aiyana privileges participatory and grassroots community-based approaches.

    Aiyana’s research has primarily adopted qualitative methods such as long-form interviews, focus groups, and surveys. Her most recent work explored grassroots activists' experiences navigating the parole application process in New York State, as well as their critical analyses of traditional research approaches to understanding dehumanization.

    In 2020, Aiyana earned a double B.A. in Political Science and Psychology, and an honors concentration in Africana Studies from Williams College. 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: abolitionism, anti-imperialism, collective memory, qualitative methods, intergenerational storytelling, propaganda studies, PAR, critical race studies

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  • Amour Castillo, Critical Psychology student at the CUNY GC, City University of New York Graduate Center

    Amour Castillo

    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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  • Natalia Lara, Critical Psychology student at the CUNY GC, City University of New York Graduate Center

    Natalia Lara

    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.

  • Roderick Hurley

    Rod Hurley

    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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  • Clairette Atri Mizrahi

    Ciudad de México (1986). Poet and Dramatist. Graduated from Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México  (BS in Psychology) and New York University (MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish). Clairette’s interests include the Arab-Jew as a diasporic-dislocating figure, Madness, theory as encounter, poetic language (beyond language) as a way of knowing and being, materiality of psychological phenomena (questioning the invention of the inner world), spillings & collapsings, shuffling & distraction as a method, and materiality of that which is deemed immaterial / unexisting.

    Research Interests: Arab-Jews, poetic language, madness, theory as encounter, collapsings & spillings 

  • Britney Moreira

    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

  • Christine O'Toole

    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

  • Katia Henrys

    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 

“It is necessary to involve ourselves in a new praxis, an activity that transforms reality, allowing us to know it not just in what it is but in what it is not, so thereby we can try to shift it towards what it should be.”
— Ignacio Martín Baró, ‘Towards a Liberation Psychology” (1986/1996)

Our Alumni

Standing on the shoulders of Martín Baró, our alumni carry commitments to research for the collective good through their powerful and diverse trajectories in colleges and universities, community-based organizations, policy positions, think tanks, museums and social movements, across the U.S. and transnationally.