Current Graduate Students
Kathleen Baggett: Current Student
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Callie Burt: Current Student
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Caitlin Dorsch, B.A., Criminology
Caitlin Dorsch is a doctoral student in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Georgia State University. She holds a B.A. in criminology from the University of Lynchburg. While at Lynchburg, she was a facilitator for the One Love Foundation Escalation Workshop and was involved in the StepUp! Bystander Intervention Program. Her research interests include the victimization of understudied populations and the evaluation of policies and programs using statistical analyses.
Leah Daigle: Current Students
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Travis C. Chafin, B.S., Criminal Justice & Criminology
Travis C. Chafin is a doctoral student at Georgia State University in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology. Travis holds a B.S. in psychology from Kennesaw State University. He will complete his M.S. in criminal justice and criminology Fall of 2020 while beginning his doctoral studies. His research interests include psychological traits of offenders and victims along with developmental theory.
Raven Muñoz, M.S., Applied Criminology
Raven Munoz is a doctoral student at Georgia State University in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology. She holds a B.S. in sociology and criminology & criminal justice from Northern Arizona University. She continued her education at Northern Arizona University earning a M.S. in Applied Criminology in Spring 2022. While at Northern Arizona University, Raven had the opportunity to serve as the university’s sexual violence prevention graduate assistant, planning campus-wide events and providing prevention education trainings to various student organizations and sports teams. Her research interests include sexual and intimate partner violence, gender roles and violence, and sexual violence prevention.
Xiangming Fang: Current Students
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Amanda Gilmore: Current Students
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Tristin Chipman, B.A., M.S.W., School of Public Health
Tristin Chipman (she/her) is a doctoral student in the School of Public Health at Georgia State University, with a concentration in Health Promotion and Behavior. Tristin received her Master of Social Work degree from the University of Georgia in 2017 and is a licensed clinical social worker with specialized training in addressing acute and developmental trauma. Tristin’s research interests center around supporting mental health and well-being of queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people. Tristin works under the supervision of Dr. Amanda Gilmore in the Alcohol and Sexual Assault Prevention Lab.
Kennicia Fortson, B.S., School of Public Health
Kennicia Fortson is a doctoral student in the School of Public Health in the Health Promotion and Behavior concentration at Georgia State University. She holds a BS in Biology and BS in Psychology which she earned from the University of Georgia in 2016. She also completed graduate studies at the University of Georgia, earning her Master of Public Health and Master of Social Work in 2019. Her capstone project was an original research study examining the relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and risk for opioid misuse. Kennicia’s research interests include child and adolescent health, racial/ethnic health disparities, community health, and early life stress/trauma. She is also interested in learning more about technology-based intervention and prevention methods. She will be joining the Alcohol and Sexual Assault Lab as a GRA, working under the direction of Dr. Amanda Gilmore.
Elaine Jackson, B.A., B.G.S., Psychology
Elaine Jackson is a doctoral student in the Public Health and Community Psychology dual-degree program with a concentration in Health Promotion and Behavior at Georgia State University. She graduated from Columbia College (MO) with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in 2020. Prior to matriculating at Georgia State University, Elaine served on active duty in the U.S. Army as an engineer team leader, aiding in the execution of heavy construction projects such as the Veterans Memorial Walk in Hinesville, GA. Additionally, she served as a Community Relations and Development Intern with the Salvation Army Midland Division in St. Louis, MO, during which time she primarily worked with immigrant populations, including first-generation American adolescents from the West Indies. Herein, Elaine designed and modified after-school programming for low-income adolescents to be more participatory by incorporating kinesthetic learning and took part in a construction mission in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad & Tobago. Elaine has also interned at the Naval Research Laboratory of the Office of Naval Research under Dr. Mark Livingston, assisting in his research on visual sentences. Presently, Elaine works under the supervision of Dr. Amanda Gilmore within the Alcohol and Sexual Assault Prevention Lab on a research project seeking to adapt an intervention designed to reduce sexual assault perpetration and disordered alcohol use among college populations to the military.
Jessica Prince, B.S., Clinical-Community program
Jessica Prince is a doctoral student in the Clinical-Community program at Georgia State University. She received her Bachelor of Science in Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2018. Upon graduating, she worked as a research coordinator at the University of Michigan, Injury Prevention Center on a randomized control trial aiming to reduce violence and alcohol consumption among high risk youth. Her research interests are broadly in 1) primary and secondary prevention programs for reducing substance use and violence and 2) implementing technology-based interventions to reduce barriers to access among under-resourced communities.
Nashalys K. Salamanca, B.A., Psychology and Women’s Studies
Nashalys K. Salamanca is a doctoral student in the Clinical-Community Psychology program. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Women’s Studies from Muhlenberg College. Before joining Dr. Amanda Gilmore’s lab, Nashalys worked in various research and practice settings, including at Stanford University, disseminating evidence-based programs to over 250 schools and colleges nationwide. She has served as a longtime volunteer at Caminar Latino, an Atlanta-area domestic violence organization serving Latinx families. These experiences sparked her research interests in applying an ecological and intersectional framework to the treatment and prevention of interpersonal violence.
Ruschelle Leone: Current Students
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Caitie Thompson, B.A., Psychology and Medical Anthropology
Caitie is a Master of Public Health candidate concentrating in Health Promotion and Behavior. She recently earned her B.A. in Psychology and Medical Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in May of 2023. Currently, she is working as a Graduate Research Assistant with the Violence and and Substance Use (VASU) Lab assisting Dr. Ruschelle Leone. Previously, Caitie worked in the Arnold Lab in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at UNC-Chapel Hill studying Cognitive Psychology and more specifically language development and comprehension. Her interests surround maternal and child health, sexual violence prevention, and mental health.
Dominic Parrott: Current Students
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Jessica L. Grom, M.S., Clinical Psychology Program
Jessica L. Grom received a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and in International Politics (National Security Option) from The Pennsylvania State University and a Master’s of Science in Psychology from Villanova University. Her Master’s thesis was completed under the direction of Dr. Erica Slotter and investigated whether self-control and attachment anxiety predicted intimate partner violence and displaced aggression. She is currently a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology at Georgia State University. Her research interests include identifying risk and protective factors for alcohol-facilitated intimate partner violence.
Caleigh Shepard, B.A., Clinical Psychology Program
Caleigh Shepard graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rhodes College in 2017. After graduation, Caleigh began work at the University of Arizona in the Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN) Lab as part of their trauma research unit. There she researched racial disparities regarding PTSD symptom presentation and treatment efficacy. Caleigh then moved to Boston to join The Fenway Institute to aid in research aimed at improving healthcare and health outcomes for the LGBTQ+ population. She is currently a graduate student at Georgia State University, earning her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. She is interested researching intimate partner violence in sexual minority couples, as well as how traditional gender roles engender violence against women and the LGBTQ+ community.
Prashansa Dickson, M.Sc., Clinical Psychology Program
Prashansa Dickson completed her M.Sc. in Forensic Psychology from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, and her BA in Psychology from Goshen College, IN. For her master’s research, she developed a measure to explore gaslighting behaviour, and study its application to interpersonal violence. She is currently a doctoral student studying Clinical Psychology at Georgia State University. Prashansa has previously worked as a trainee forensic psychologist and researcher at Ashworth High Secure Hospital, and as a youth care worker at Elkhart County Juvenile Detention Center. Prior to starting her PhD, she worked at Project39A at the National Law University, Delhi. There, she completed clinical assessments with prisoners on death row, and researched mental health’s interaction with the criminal justice system. Her research interests include interpersonal violence perpetration, risk and protective factors for violence, psychopathy, criminal justice reform, and restorative justice.
Dennis Reidy: Current Students
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Anne Laterra, MPH, School of Public Health
Anne Laterra is a doctoral student at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health. She is also, at present, a Senior Technical Advisor for Evaluation and Learning at CARE USA, an international humanitarian and development organization and has more than seven years of experience in the monitoring, evaluation, research, and implementation of sexual and reproductive health programming. She has a particular passion for operationalizing rigorous quasi-experimental research designs with those working and living in complex, resource-limited settings and is a believer in mixed- and participatory evaluation methods that center the rights and experiences of the historically marginalized. Anne is eager to build her research and evaluation toolkit through her doctoral studies and is interested in the development and evaluation of theory-informed and evidence-based interventions to improve adolescent sexual and reproductive health. She holds a master’s degree in Public Health from the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health.
Bre Edison, MPH, School of Public Health
Bre Edison is pursuing her PhD at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health in the department of Health Promotion and Behavior. As a graduate research assistant under the mentorship of Drs. Dennis Reidy and Katherine Masyn, she primarily works with violence prevention in adolescent populations. Her research interests are in sexual health communication and education specifically in racial/ethnic and sexual and gender minorities for adolescents and young adults. She has previous employment and research experience in clinical trials working as a Parkinson’s Disease research coordinator with the Movement Disorders Neurology department at the University of Pittsburgh. She also received her master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health in 2018, with a concentration in management, intervention, and community practice of infectious diseases. Her undergraduate studies were completed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she majored in Exercise Science and minored in Biology and Medical Anthropology.
Grace S. Liu, MPH, School of Public Health
Grace Liu is a doctoral student in the Epidemiology program at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health. She has spent much of her career examining the influence of norms and attitudes on individual behavior, public perception of public health issues, and general understanding of and support for prevention efforts. She is particularly interested in identifying and addressing structural and social drivers of violence among LGBTQ+ communities and racial/ethnic minorities. Currently, as an Epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), Grace conducts research on violent deaths among sexual and gender minorities and targeted interpersonal violence motivated by hate and/or prejudice. Grace looks forward to advancing her academic training in epidemiological theories and applied methods to better evaluate community- and societal-level influences of violence and inform norms change approaches to violence prevention and health equity. She holds a Master of Public Health degree in Epidemiology from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Laura Salazar: Current Student
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Julianna Capobianco, M.A., School of Public Health
Julianna is a doctoral student in the School of Public Health concentrating in Health Promotion and Behavior. She holds a Master’s in Psychological Sciences with an emphasis on data science from the University of South Florida. Her community work and desire for equality-focused research led her to pursue opportunities in diverse clinical and research settings. She holds experience in qualitative, quantitative, and thematic analyses. After earning her bachelor’s degree in psychology, she worked at the Rothman Center for Pediatric Neuropsychiatry evaluating and developing treatment plans for adolescents with neuropsychiatric and behavioral disorders. While obtaining her master’s degree she worked as a research assistant at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in the Department of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology disseminating evidence-based interventions in medical and community settings. Additionally, she was a lab coordinator and lab manager at USF focusing on promoting sexual health and research identifying intersectional stigma and discrimination to aid in violence prevention among adolescents living with HIV and sexual and gender minorities. Prior to coming to Georgia State, she worked as a clinical research coordinator for Stony Brook Medicine’s Cancer Center. Julianna is particularly interested in evaluating the impact research can have in making community-based, organizational, and legislative changes for underserved populations. She is committed to contributing new public health knowledge and developing interventions to promote health equity, reduce health disparities, and ameliorate critical health problems.
Nyla Flowers, MPH, School of Public Health
Nyla Flowers is a doctoral student in the Health Promotion and Behavior Department at Georgia State University. She holds an MPH in Behavioral Sciences and Health Education from Rollins School of Public Health. Nyla has research experience in qualitative research focused on underrepresented populations, such as African American women and women at-risk for intimate partner violence in clinical settings. She also has some expertise in health communications at the federal level. Her research interests are in violence prevention, specifically sexual violence and adverse childhood experiences as well as health disparities in underserved minority communities.
Shannon Self-Brown: Current Students
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Jamani Garner, B.S, M.S., Psychology
Jamani Garner is a doctoral student at Georgia State University in the School of Public Health. She holds a B.S. and M.S. in psychology from Augusta University. While at Augusta University, she worked as a graduate research assistant and intern for faculty within the Institute of Public and Preventive Health. Her research interests include, broadly, evaluating and implementing interventions for child maltreatment prevention, and increasing access to mental health services among marginalized populations.
Elizabeth W. Perry, MPH, School of Public Health
Elizabeth (Liz) is a doctoral student in the School of Public Health concentrating in Health Promotion and Behavior. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Kennesaw State University and a Master in Public Health from Georgia State University. After graduating from KSU and while completing her MPH, Liz worked as a Sexual Assault Victim Advocate for Day League’s Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program. Liz’s research interests center around child maltreatment prevention, adolescent trauma, and implementation science to research ways to effectively increase the reach of evidence-based programs in low-resourced areas in low- and middle-income countries.
Manderley Recinos, School of Public Health
Manderley Recinos is a doctoral student in the School of Public Health with a focus on Health Promotion. She received her Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Psychology from Augusta University. During her masters, she interned at the Institute of Public and Preventive Health where she worked on a project examining the integration of a mobile health app into evidence-based interventions aimed at preventing child maltreatment and treating child maltreatment symptomatology. Manderley’s research interests include prevention programs for child maltreatment, physiological effects of emotional abuse, intergenerational trauma, and treatments for child maltreatment such as TF-CBT.
Katherine Reuben, B.S., School of Public Health
Katherine Reuben received a B.S. in Psychology from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2018. Her undergraduate senior thesis was on trauma and dissociation in autism spectrum disorders. Additionally, she is working on a study related to therapy experiences for adult trauma survivors with complex dissociative disorders. Katherine is interested in researching developmental disability as a potential disparity in risk and treatment of childhood interpersonal violence, dissociation as an outcome of trauma, and commercial sexual exploitation of children. She is currently a graduate student in the Georgia State University Public Health program.
Cynthia Stappenbeck: Current Students
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Emily Patton, B.A., Clinical/Community Psychology Program
Emily Patton is a doctoral student in Georgia State University’s Clinical Psychology Program. She completed her bachelor’s degree in psychology and minored in Public Health Studies at DePaul University. In her undergraduate career, she assisted in program evaluation for a bystander efficacy intervention. After graduating, she coordinated a study evaluating school-based efficacy and effectiveness interventions at Northwestern University. Following that, she worked at an inpatient nationally recognized treatment center for Veterans with PTSD and assessed local community members for PTSD at Rush University Medical Center. Her primary interests pertain to enhancing treatment outcomes for those who have experienced sexual violence.
Anna Peddle, B.S., Clinical/Community Psychology Program
Anna Peddle is a doctoral student in Georgia State University’s Clinical-Community Psychology program. She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Furman University in 2018. Prior to joining Dr. Cynthia Stappenbeck’s lab at GSU, she worked as a clinical research coordinator at the University of Minnesota on a project investigating subgroups within opioid use disorder. She has previously completed supervised research projects that span the topics of trait-level mindfulness, externalizing behavior and IQ, and social support in addiction. Anna has also worked in inpatient psychiatric settings with adolescents and adults with domestic and sexual violence histories, substance use disorders, and self-harm behaviors. At GSU, Anna is interested in researching novel and evidence-based interventions for substance-abusing populations and victims of domestic and sexual violence.
Brennah Ross, B.S., Clinical/Community Psychology Program
Brennah Ross is currently a doctoral student in Georgia State University’s Clinical and Community Psychology program. She graduated with a B.S. in Economics from The College of New Jersey, and later completed a psychology post-bacc at Villanova University. Prior to graduate school, she worked at Temple University coordinating studies on anxiety treatment including an NIH-funded clinical trial. Brennah is interested in interdisciplinary research that aims to improve psychological outcomes for victims of sexual violence.
Olivia Westemeier, B.S., Psychology
Olivia Westemeier is in the Clinical-Community Psychology PhD program. She received her Bachelor of Science in Psychology and a minor in Rhetoric from the University of Iowa in 2021. At Iowa, she assisted in developing protective behavioral strategies to reduce sexually aggressive behavior; and worked with Iowa’s Anti-Violence Coalition to collaborate on university policy, system response, and prevention programming for campus sexual violence. Her primary topics of interest are how event-level and psychological mechanisms act as risk or protective factors for sexually aggressive behavior and integrates various theories and methods within clinical, social, and cognitive psychology. She is also interested in how bridging basic-and applied-level acquaintance-initiated sexual assault research can inform sexual perpetration prevention programming.
Kevin Swartout: Current Students
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Kamilla Bonnesen, Community Psychology and Public Health dual degree program
Kamilla is a doctoral students in the Community and Public Health Program in the Division of Epidemiology. She received her honours B.Sc in the Psychology from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Her research interests include violence against women prevention and cross-cultural initiatives to target violence prevention and intervention collaboratively. Additionally, she is also interested in sociopolitical barriers to effective sexual violence prevention and intervention.
Daniel J. Lanni, M.S., Clincial/Community Psychology
Daniel Lanni received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Science at Oakland University in Psychology in 2016 and 2019, respectively. Currently, Daniel is a doctoral student in Georgia State University’s Clinical and Community Psychology program. He is interested in the relationship between alcohol use, emotion regulation, motivations, attitudes, and sexual assault perpetration. Additionally, he is also interested in social norm-based interventions as a means to reduce sexual violence.
Yamini Patel, B.S., Community Psychology and Public Health Program
Yamini Patel is a doctoral student in the Community and Public Health program. Yamini graduated from Georgia State University in 2018 with a B.S. in Psychology, and her research interests include community level approaches to violence against women intervention and prevention. Specifically, Yamini is interested in community-based programs that target gender biases, power imbalances, and sexual violence perpetration.
Rebecca Wilson, M.A., Community Psychology Program
Rebecca Wilson is a doctoral student in the Community Psychology program at Georgia State University. Rebecca graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Drama/Theatre from the University of Montana. She toured with multiple Reparatory Theatre companies performing in plays like My Children, My Africa, Waiting For Godot, and The Laramie Project. Her tour with My Children, My Africa included traveling to underserved communities and Native American reservations discussing community issues of social justice, oppression, and response and prevention strategies. She moved to Chicago where she completed her Master of Arts in counseling and rehabilitation psychology. She worked at Cook County Jail under the direction of Dr. Doreen Salina and Dr. Nancy Soros as a part of the Cook County Sheriff’s Justice Services researching violence against women prevention strategies as well as providing individual and group mental health assessment and treatment. She continued to work for Dr. Leonard Jason at DePaul’s Center for Community Psychology examining violence prevention strategies for African American youth and barriers to recovery for women in the criminal justice system. Rebecca’s research interests include: Examining social norms supporting sexual violence, public health and economic policy approaches to violence prevention, as well as varieties of patriarchy and violence against women. Additionally, she is interested in insurgent group behavior, how social movements become violent, the impact of conflict on women, and the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.
Daniel Whitaker: Current Students
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Rachel Carr, B.S., School of Public Health
Rachel Carr received her Bachelor of Science in Economics from Georgia College & State University. She is a currently a Master of Public Health student with a concentration in Health Promotion and Behavior. Her research interests include intimate partner violence prevention, sexual violence prevention, sex education and women’s participation in the labor force.
Amanda Norris, B.A., Criminal Justice and Sociology
Amanda Norris is a master student in the School of Public Health with a concentration in Health Promotion and Behavior at Georgia State University. Before attending Georgia State University, Amanda earned her B.A. in both Criminal Justice and Sociology from the University of Georgia. Due to the completion of an undergraduate internship in the Division of Violence Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control, her passion for violence prevention, and largely public health, blossomed. Amanda’s research and career interests include intimate partner violence, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, health equity, and social determinants of health.