Doctoral Students
Hope Holland
Hope Holland is a fifth-year doctoral student working with Dr. Nicole Allen. Hope’s research focuses broadly on gender-based violence, and she is particularly interested in understanding the ways that cultural climate interacts with individual differences to result in distinct experiences of gender-based violence. Her current research focuses on the impact of public harassment on both psychological well-being and behavior.
Hope aspires to be a Scholar-Activist and believes that consistent community engagement is critical for informing her work.
Allyson M. Blackburn
Allyson M. Blackburn (she & they) is a clinical-community psychology doctoral student interested in the psychological sequelae of sexual violence, help-seeking behaviors, resource allocation, and network analytic approaches to examine how survivors seek out formal and informal supports following victimization. Allyson is specifically interested in sexual violence among sexual orientation and gender-diverse individuals. Allyson serves as the Editorial Manager for the American Journal of Community Psychology.
Allyson graduated summa cum laude from Tufts University in 2017 with a B.A. in Clinical Psychology. As an undergraduate, Allyson was the student co-chair of the Resource Working group on the Tufts University President’s Task Force for Sexual Misconduct Prevention and Education, working to implement resources and effective pathways for referrals for survivors of sexual assault. Additionally, they worked as a Research Assistant at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)’s Community Psychiatry Program for Research in Implementation and Dissemination of Evidence-Based Therapies (PRIDE) under Dr. Luana Marques, where Allyson completed a senior honors thesis on the specific barriers to care faced by Latinos seeking treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Upon graduation, Allyson worked as a post-baccalaureate research assistant within the MGH Department of Psychiatry studying PTSD treatment and treatment engagement. Allyson also served as a Rape Crisis Counselor at the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center on the 24-hour Hotline.
Agnes Rieger
Agnes (Aggie) Rieger (pronouns she/her/hers) is a second-year student in the Clinical-Community Psychology Ph.D. program. Rieger is most interested in community and societal-level interventions to prevent and respond to gender-based violence (including public health approaches, social norms, health communication, and systems change) and in provider experiences and partner-driven evaluations. She is a student representative for the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies’ Child Maltreatment and Interpersonal Violence Special Interest Group (CMIV SIG) and a mentor in the Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program.
Previously, Rieger coordinated research at the Center for Psychotherapy Research (University of Pennsylvania) on depression treatment in the community mental health setting. Rieger earned her B.A. in Psychology with honors from Wellesley College, where she was a research assistant for a study involving a local girls’ leadership camp, and where she researched attitude change and creativity. Rieger’s undergraduate mental health advocacy has been recognized by the Jordan Porco Foundation (Student Mental Health Advocate of the Year, 2017) and she was the Women Organized Against Rape Volunteer of the Year (2018).
Breana Griffin 
Breana (Brea) Griffin (Pronouns: She/They) is a first-year student in the Clinical-Community Psychology Ph. D. Program. Breana is interested in community and organizational approaches to preventing and responding to gender-based violence. Breana hopes to explore intersectional, anti-oppressive strategies to expand access to care for survivors and develop culturally relevant education materials.
Prior to graduate study, Breana served as an AmeriCorps VISTA at the Wyoming Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, where Breana worked on community outreach and capacity building through an anti-oppression framework. Breana received her B.S. in Biology and Psychology with Honors from St. Lawrence University in 2019. Breana also served as a Campus Advocate for the St. Lawrence University Advocates Program.
Master’s Students
Apoorva Nag 
Apoorva Nag (pronouns: she/her) is a second-year community psychology graduate student in Masters of Psychological Science program. Her research interests explore social climate factors that impact community system responses toward sexual violence. For instance, she is interested in examining help-seeking experiences and responses to survivors’ needs as influenced by the broader intersectional lens that affects community behavior. In the future, she seeks to engage in community-based participatory action research using mixed methods to develop culturally competent survivor-centered response systems. These systems could inform the creation of holistic educational structures and public policies that may further the progress of prevention of violence against womxn.
Apoorva serves as a sexual health educator in McKinley Health Center at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is also a student employee at Center for Science and Behavioral Science at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Prior to graduate study, Apoorva received her B.S. in Psychology with Honors in 2020 and holds a graduate certificate degree in Counseling Psychology from Bangalore, India.
For more information about the Masters of Psychological Sciences program, please visit this website.
ARC Team Alumni
Jon Bystrynski
Jonathan Bystrynski is an alumnus of the clinical-community psychology doctoral program at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 2021. His research, employing multiple methods, is justice-centered with two primary aims: a) enhance the prevention and response to violence (e.g., gender-based violence); and b) highlight the experiences of marginalized groups as they navigate structural inequalities to promote health and well-being. These aims have been advanced in his involvement with the Action Research & Collaboration team with efforts focused on sexual misconduct, psychopathology, and his dissertation on autism spectrum traits and sexual victimization. Jonathan has also conducted the University of Illinois’ Sexual Misconduct and Perceived Campus Response Survey from its initiation in 2015 (https://wecare.illinois.edu/reports/). Jon completed a pre-doctoral internship at the MIND Institute at UC Davis Medical Center, where he is currently a post-doctoral fellow (for more information, click here.)
Camarin Meno
Camarin Meno is a doctoral candidate in the clinical-community Psychology Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her program of research focuses on explicating and empowering community understandings of and responses to social problems, such as gender-based violence, suicide, and colonization. Informed by empowerment and decolonial perspectives, she examines how individuals make sense of and frame social problems, as well as explores how they perceive culturally relevant solutions at the individual, family, and community levels. Prior to her doctoral studies, Camarin obtained her MS in Clinical Psychology from the University of Guam, where she was involved in implementing culturally relevant prevention and intervention services for Indigenous Pacific Islander and Asian children, young adults, and families. Camarin’s long-term career goal is to return to her home community of Guam, where she hopes to participate in training Guam’s future mental health providers to conduct culturally relevant research and intervention. Camarin completed her pre-doctoral internship at the Ola Lahui Rural Hawai’i Behavioral Health Program and is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Guam in the Department of Psychology (for more information, click here).
Eric Clausell, Ph.D., is currently a licensed clinical psychologist working at the VA in Puget Sound, Washington.
Emily Dworkin, Ph.D., is currently an acting assistant professor at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. More information about her research can be found here.
Shabnam Javdani, Ph.D., is currently an associate professor of applied psychology at NYU Steinhardt. More information about her current research can be found here.
Amy Lehrner, Ph.D., is currently an assistant professor of psychology at the Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. More information about her research can be found here.
Suvarna Menon, Ph.D., is currently a post-doc at Northern Illinois University.
Leigh Ann Perry, Ph.D., is currently working at Facebook as a Regional Intelligence Team Leader.
Amanda Reid, Ph.D., is currently a Research and Evaluation specialist working at Rotary International all around the world.
Nathan Todd, Ph.D., is currently an associate professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign within the division of Clinical and Community Psychology. More information about his research can be found here.
Jennifer Totter, Ph.D., is currently a licensed clinical psychologist working in Michigan. More information about her practice can be found here.
Angela Walden, Ph.D., is currently an assistant research and clinical professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago in the school of Medicine. More information about her current work can be found here.
Kelly Watt, Ph.D., is currently working at Protect International Risk and Safety Services. More information about her current work can be found here.
