About
Emily J. Blevins (she/her) is a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She works primarily with Dr. Archana Basu on expanding access to equitable and trauma-informed services for children and families in the Boston area.
Emily received a PhD in Clinical-Community Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2023. She primarily studies mechanisms across ecological levels that drive White Americans' racial behavior, with a particular emphasis on attitudes and emotions. Emily's most recent project examined White college students' emotional reactions to calls for racial justice and how these emotions explained antiracist behavior. More broadly, Emily's research focuses on interpersonal harm and interpersonal healing across the lifespan -- she asks "why do people hurt one another, how can we prevent it, and how can we help individuals and communities to heal in the wake of harm?"
Current Work
Dr. Blevins is currently working on a project to increase access to trauma-informed services for children and parents in the Boston area. This project involves a community-based participatory research (CBPR) initiative where her team is building an advisory board of parents in their clinic to inform what services are needed and how to conduct ethical and culturally sensitive studies of their clinical interventions. Emily will be working with parents to understand how to improve current services and to develop humanizing study protocols to examine the effect of trauma-informed interventions on children's and parents' brain and bodies. Overall, this project aims to build out systemic supports for parents and children coping with stress and trauma, with an emphasis on equity, empowerment, and transformational change.
Research Area Keyword(s)
Racial Affect, Intergroup Emotions, Interpersonal Harm and Healing, Trauma-Informed Care