Brianna Delker, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
About
My program of research focuses on the lifespan psychological impact of interpersonal violence (IPV), or physical, sexual, and psychological abuse perpetrated within relationships. A clinical scientist by training, I am guided by systemic perspectives on trauma that are developmentally and socioculturally informed. When IPV occurs, it tends to happen in relationships with power imbalances, and to reflect gendered inequalities in society, along with intersecting forms of privilege and oppression on the basis of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and so on. As such, my work takes a “structural-psychological” approach (Syed & McLean, 2021) to study how individuals (survivors, perpetrators, bystanders) psychologically contend with structural forces that perpetuate IPV and invalidate survivors. With funding from the CCCR, I have collaborated with faculty associates (Kate McLean and Alex Czopp) and student affiliates to design studies that examine two major systemic influences on the psychology of trauma storytelling: (1) the dominant American cultural preference for trauma stories to end redemptively, with personal strength gained and lessons learned, and (2) cultural stigma surrounding IPV, or processes such as denial and victim-blame which legitimize IPV and delegitimize survivors (links to publications here). Since joining the CCCR as a faculty associate in 2017, I have supervised and trained about a dozen undergraduate and graduate student researchers affiliated with the Center; served on the Advisory Board in 2018 and from 2020-2022; and served as an Interim Director from 2021-2022.