Yara Mekawi, PhD

Yara Mekawi, COLOR Lab, Challenging Ongoing Legacies of Racism, Yara University of Louisville, Mekawi University of Louisville, COLOR LAB Louisville

 

 

Dr. Yara Mekawi is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and head of the Challenging Ongoing Legacies of Racism (COLOR) Lab. In the COLOR Lab, we aim to challenge ongoing legacies of racism both directly (e.g., understanding and changing racist attitudes and behavior) as well as indirectly (e.g., challenging dominant models of psychopathology that have historically excluded racially marginalized groups). Specifically, we examine racial discrimination and racial prejudice at the intersection of affect and cognition. Using interdisciplinary and multi-method approaches, we focus on three overarching lines of inquiry: 
(a) How does racial discrimination lead to negative mental health outcomes for racially marginalized groups (e.g., cognitive and affective mechanisms)? What factors either ameliorate or exacerbate these processes? 

(b) What are the cognitive and affective factors that maintain racially prejudiced behavior and attitudes among individuals from racially privileged groups? and 

(c) What are the most effective strategies to reduce racial prejudice and ameliorate its effects on the mental health of individuals from racially marginalized groups?


EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

2021   Postdoctoral Fellow, Emory University School of Medicine

2019   PhD, Clinical and Community Psychology,  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

2018   Doctoral Internship in Health Service Psychology, Emory University School of Medicine

2014   MA, Clinical and Community Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

2010   BA, Applied Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago  
For full list of publications, please see: ResearchGate or Google Scholar. 

Writing Resources 
  • Need a way to keep track of your papers and projects? Check out this writing tracker I use!
  • Need a way to organize papers for a literature review? Check out this literature search tracker!
Grad School Resources
  • Curious about how Dr. Mekawi evaluates grad student applicants? See this work-in-progress evaluation document! 
  • Need a way to organize all of your grad school applications? See this grad school tracker document!
  • For a list of other grad school application resources, check this out. 

Current Students

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