Current Graduate and Postdoctoral Researchers

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Trisha Dehrone

Trisha Dehrone received her B.A. in Psychology from Rutgers University – Newark and a M.Sc. in Social Psychology from UMass Amherst. She is currently completing her PhD in the UMass Psychology of Peace and Violence Program, with support from a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. She became interested in improving intergroup relations and advancing social justice as an intern in the White House's Office of Presidential Correspondence, managing casework for constituents interfacing with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) on a range of immigration and discrimination cases. Her research examines how people experience and navigate interactions with members of other social groups. She is specifically interested in understanding the factors that may serve as barriers to or facilitate greater authenticity during these encounters, and whether cultivating greater authenticity may relate to greater feelings of intergroup closeness and empowerment. She has designed and evaluated interventions to bridge group differences, including in the U.S., Rwanda, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. During her graduate years, she also served as an intern with the Center for Inclusion and Belonging at the American Immigration Council and with the United Nations committee of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.

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Liora Morhayim

Liora is a PhD student in the Psychology of Peace and Violence program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her B.A. in psychology and international relations at Brown University and M.A. in conflict mediation at the University of Barcelona. Liora is broadly interested in investigating the behavioral underpinnings of social-political conflicts and finding interventions informed by social psychology to improve group relations. She is conducting both experimental and applied research on intergroup contact. She is specifically interested in the social categorization process, as well as in perception of multiple social identities and negative experiences during intergroup contact. She has worked with non-governmental organizations like the Trust for Public Land and International Organization for Migration (IOM) to implement and evaluate contact interventions. She is the co-author of the toolkit, Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating Impact of Social Mixing Programs, and contributed to developing its corresponding e-course for IOM.

Past Graduate and Postdoctoral Researchers

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Cierra Abellera

Cierra Abellera was a beloved 5th year graduate student in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, when she passed away tragically in November 2023. After attending a community college in Hawaii, Cierra received her bachelor’s degree from Boise State University with the university’s highest honors (Summa Cum Laude). Cierra enrolled in the PhD program at UMass Amherst in 2019 to study intergroup relations, with a particular interest in cultivating feelings of belonging and inclusion among refugee communities and among members of minoritized racial and ethnic groups. During her years in our graduate program, Cierra held research internships with Perception Institute and the Migration Policy Institute, and she received the Applied Social Issues Internship Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, to fund a project she initiated with Hello Neighbor, through which she developed and analyzed surveys to assess refugees’ understanding and experiences of race and racism within their new context of the United States. Cierra also collaborated with Dr. Meta van der Linden on the EUR Bridge Project, a multi-wave survey examining the views and experiences of newly resettled Syrian refugees in the Netherlands, to learn what contributes to their feelings of belonging and sense of home. Cierra was a Yale Ciencia Academy Scholar, and a participant in Stanford University’s PRISM program, both designed to equip doctoral students from underrepresented backgrounds with skills and networks to prepare them for postdoctoral research positions.

Beyond all her academic achievements and accomplishments, Cierra also touched the hearts of all who knew her.

Rezarta Bilali

Rezarta Bilali received her PhD in social psychology, with a doctoral concentration in the psychology of peace and violence, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2009. She received her BA in psychology from Bogazici University, and a masters’ degree in conflict resolution at Sabanci University, both in Istanbul, Turkey. Her research focuses on the social psychological underpinnings of intergroup conflict and violence in various conflict settings, including in Albania, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Turkey, and the U.S.). She merges theory and practice by working with non-governmental organizations to develop and evaluate violence prevention and reconciliation media programs. The broader goal of this work is to generate knowledge that successfully informs practice and social policy on prevention of intergroup violence and promotion of positive intergroup relations. To achieve this goal, she contextualizes her research in real world settings, uses multiple methodologies (e.g., experiments, surveys, interviews, content analysis of written materials), considers historical and structural variables, and engages practitioners in her work. Her research has been supported by numerous foundations including USAID, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, American Psychological Foundation, International Peace Research Association, Psychology Beyond Borders, and Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. Rezarta is now an Associate Professor of Psychology and Social Intervention at New York University; prior to joining the NYU faculty, Rezarta was an Assistant Professor of Conflict Resolution at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

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Brooke Burrows

Brooke Burrows received her PhD in social psychology in 2024, with a doctoral concentration in the psychology of peace and violence, after having received her BA in psychology and human rights from Columbia University. She is now an assistant professor of psychology at Appalachian State University in her home state of North Carolina. Brooke served as an AmeriCorps Project Conserve Member in Western North Carolina and as a Peace Corps Community Development Volunteer in Armenia; through these experiences, she has grown invested in the application of research to better understand and address the needs of vulnerable communities facing an increasingly connected but also resource-stressed world. Her research focuses on social change processes such as collective action, conflict and conflict resolution, and transformative politics. Throughout her graduate years, she has worked as a research staff associate at Columbia University’s Center for Justice, where she supported monitoring and evaluation efforts of programs committed to ending mass incarceration and advancing alternatives to the current criminal legal system. Brooke has contributed to evaluations of contact-based programs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, and the U.S., and she was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship for her work examining how public recounting of suffering can lead to processes of meaning-making and empowerment, with downstream impact for conflict reconciliation outcomes.

Diala Hawi

Diala Hawi earned her PhD in social psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2014, after having received a master’s degree in clinical psychology at the American University of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon. She is now an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at the Doha Institute (DI) for Graduate Studies in Qatar, where she founded the psychology program prior to joining DI as faculty, and where she is affiliated with its Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies. Her prior professional experience includes a three-year post as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Clark University (U.S.) and a three-year post as a clinical and research consultant in the Department of Psychiatry at the AUB Medical Center. She has also served as a project coordinator and development director on projects funded by UNICEF, organizing psychosocial workshops on postwar trauma, conflict resolution, and dialogue, and she has served as a mediator and facilitator for democracy education programs sponsored by the U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative and National Democratic Institute. As a social and political psychologist, her research deals with a host of social categories, including national, ethnic, religious, and racial group identities, which she seeks to situate in their unique cultural and historical contexts. Diala’s research interests focus on social issues that stem from intergroup conflict, with an emphasis on the perspectives of disadvantaged and oppressed groups and prospects for alliance-building between groups. Her recent research projects examine the role of third-party effects in multiple-group relations, how nationalism and patriotism change over time, and the implications of multiculturalism in Arab states. Overall, her research contributes to our broader understanding of how groups relate to one another and what factors hinder the transition from conflict to peace.

Katya Migacheva

Katya Migacheva received her PhD in social psychology, with a doctoral concentration in the psychology of peace and violence, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2012. Prior to enrolling at UMass, she studied foreign languages and cultures at Samara State Pedagogic University (Russia) and studied psychology at Indiana University-Purdue University (USA). She is now a social scientist at RAND, where she leads multidisciplinary research teams, liaises between researchers and policy stakeholders, and serves as a faculty member at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, all of which allow her to enact her passion for connecting social science and application and bringing research to inform the urgent challenges of today. Working both in the U.S. and internationally, Katya brings a wealth of experience and diverse methodological and subject matter expertise to conduct research and evaluate programs in the domains of targeted violence prevention, societies in transition, diversity, equity, and inclusion, education, criminal justice, and international relations. Prior to RAND, Migacheva served as a Senior Fellow on the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the U.S. Congress, working closely with Commission Co-Chair Jim McGovern (D-MA); in this role, she managed a diverse international portfolio, developed legislation, liaised with international non-governmental organizations, and elevated social scientific voices to inform foreign and domestic policies.

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Thomas O’Brien

Thomas O’Brien received his PhD in social psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2017, with doctoral concentrations in the psychology of peace and violence, and quantitative methods. Prior to enrolling at UMass, he receiving his B.A. in Psychology and Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Studies at Washington University of St. Louis. His research largely focuses on the structural and psychological processes that shape trust of institutions, authorities, and experts; he has applied this research to criminal justice reform, as well as to broader issues of public policy and public health. Along with this work, Thomas has also published research on intergroup conflict and factors that shape public support for foreign policies increasing or resolving international conflict. After receiving his PhD, he worked as a postdoctoral research scholar at Yale Law School and as a postdoctoral researcher in the Social Action Lab at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. He now works as a statistician with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

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Christina Rucinski

Christina Rucinski worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the IRSJ lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst between 2018 and 2021, seeking to understand the experiences and attitudes of K-12 teachers in racially and ethnically diverse public school classrooms, and to identify critical factors to inform interventions that can address challenges related to teaching racially and ethnically diverse student populations. She holds a PhD and MA in Applied Developmental Psychology from Fordham University and a BS in Psychology from Tufts University. As a developmental scientist, she has conducted research on children’s social-emotional learning, classroom racial and ethnic diversity, and teacher-student relationships across racial lines. Christina has worked with children for most of her life, including as an early childhood educator and in collaboration with the content research team at Sesame Workshop. She now works as the Senior Research-to-Practice Program Manager at EmbraceRace. In this role, she translates insights from scientific research to inform caregiver and educator practices to support healthy racial learning in young children. She brings an evidence-based lens to her work with EmbraceRace, in translating from research to practice and back again.

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Özden Melis Uluğ

Özden Melis Uluğ was a postdoctoral researcher in the UMass Psychology of Peace and Violence Program between 2016-2019, after completing her BSc degree at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and her MSc and PhD at Jacobs University Bremen in Germany. She then worked at Clark University (USA) as a Visiting Assistant Professor between 2019-2020 before accepting a faculty position at the University of Sussex (UK), where she is now a Senior Lecturer in Psychology. Melis has broad-ranging interests relevant to the study of intergroup relations, collective action, and social justice, with special emphases on conflict narratives and people’s subjective understandings of conflict, as well as on collective action strategies that promote social change through solidarity and allyship. She studies these issues through integrating relevant perspectives from both scholars and activists, and she incorporates both qualitative and quantitative methods into her work. Melis also served as co-editor for Researching Peace, Conflict, and Power in the Field: Methodological Challenges and Opportunities, published by Springer in 2020.

Johanna Vollhardt

Johanna Vollhardt received her Ph.D. in social psychology, with a doctoral concentration in the psychology of peace and violence, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2009. She joined the Psychology Department faculty at Clark University in Fall 2009; she is now an Associate Professor of Psychology at Clark, and she is also affiliated with Clark’s program in Peace and Conflict Studies and its Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Her research focuses on the psychological impact of collective victimization, focusing on questions such as: how do people make sense of oppression and violence against their group? How do different beliefs about collective victimization relate to intergroup attitudes and social and political views? What explains different resistance strategies in violent and repressive contexts? How is group-based power understood in the context of oppression? Johanna and her collaborators conduct this research using multiple methods (e.g., experiments, field experiments, surveys, content analysis, archival research, interviews, focus groups, Q-methodology studies) and working in different contexts with various ethnic, racial, religious, and national groups. She also co-edits the Journal of Social and Political Psychology.