Affiliated Members |

Rachael Ellison (Illinois Institute of Technology)

Dr. Rachael Ellison is an Assistant Professor of Psychology as well as Associate DCT and Practicum Coordinator at Illinois Institute of Technology. She is a Clinical Neuropsychologist with specialized training in traumatic brain injury, dementia, ADHD, intersecting identities, systemic injustice, and PTSD, and conducts neuropsychological evaluations and cognitive rehabilitation. She completed her clinical internship through the UCSD and VA San Diego Healthcare System with specialized rotations in neuropsychology, TBI, cognitive rehabilitation, and PTSD, and post-doctoral fellowship in clinical neuropsychology through Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital, while also engaging in post-doctoral research at Northwestern University throughout her fellowship.

Her doctoral degree in Clinical and Community Psychology from DePaul University focused on reducing systemic injustice and improving the lives of marginalized individuals and groups through research on racial privilege, increasing openness to diversity and cultural competence, engaging individuals and groups from privileged backgrounds in social justice work. Dr. Ellison graduated from Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy. Her current research merges her background and interest in social justice and community through her Socially Conscious Lab. She is also serving a six-year term as the Chair for the Division 40 Women in Neuropsychology (WIN) Committee, and speaks regularly at national conferences and other training events.

Jacquelyn Stephens

Jacquelyn Stephens is a postdoctoral fellow who graduated from Northwestern’s Human Development and Social Policy program, and was a fellow in the Society, Biology, and Health (SBH) and DevSci clusters. Her research examines how emotion processes change across the lifespan, highlighting the consequences for health, well-being, and relationship functioning. She is also interested in how stress and negative emotions get “under the skin” to affect health, and how positive emotions might help to buffer this process. Before attending Northwestern, Jacquelyn received a B.A. in Psychology from DePauw University and worked for two years at the Prindle Institute for Ethics. In her spare time, she enjoys doing yoga, reading in her hammock, and trying new restaurants in Chicago.

Stephanie Koning (University of Nevada, Reno)

Dr. Koning’s background is in population health, sociology and policy research. Her focus areas are biopsychosocial determinants of maternal and child health; structural violence and social stress; and the health implications of migration and displacement. She has led or co-led multiple data collection projects using survey, interview and ethnographic methods, and uses quantitative analytical techniques from biostatistical, epidemiological and quasi-experimental study designs. Her work spans local, global and international border contexts including Northern Nevada, North America and Southeast Asia.

Interpersonal violence affects 1 in 3 women and nearly half of children globally. Additionally, organized violence forcibly displaces over 1% of the world’s population yearly. Each type of violence operates within broader systems of inequality—structural violence. Yet despite wide recognition of its harm, how violence operates within and across global contexts to get “under the skin” in ways affecting biology, behavior and health over the life course remains poorly understood and poorly addressed. To confront this, she studies how violence and stress are socially patterned and underlie health inequities through biopsychosocial pathways over the individual life course and across generations. With the aim of promoting social justice and human rights as critical aspects of public health, she partners with communities, women’s groups, government agencies and the United Nations to conduct collaborative research that informs public policy and health practice.

Shanting Chen (University of Florida)

Dr. Shanting Chen (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Florida. She received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Her research interests have broadly centered on the intersection of stress, family, and cultural contexts in understanding the development of ethnic/racial minoritized adolescents. Specifically, she explores the social-cultural and physiological mechanisms (e.g., Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis, allostatic load) of the effects of stress (e.g., perceived discrimination) on ethnic minority adolescents’ well-being. In addition, she takes a strength- (rather than risk-) based approach to explore the adaptive and protective factors (e.g., parental/peer cultural socialization, psychological resilience) that promote ethnic minority adolescents’ academic outcomes and psycho-social and physical development. Her research is theoretically driven by ecological theory, the integrative model of minority child development, and the biopsychosocial model of health.