Devin G. Atallah

Assistant Professor, Clinical Psychology

Devin G. Atallah, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston, which is on unceded lands of the Masssachusett, Pawtucket, Wampanoag, Nipmuck, and other Indigenous Peoples.

Dr. Atallah is a founder and a leader of the Decolonial Antiracism Research & Action (DARA) Collective for Healing & Liberación. Dr. Atallah is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic person of Arab, Latinx, and European-American/white ancestry, born in Sacramento, California, which was and still is, the lands of Indigenous peoples, including the Nisenan people, the Southern Maidu people, the Valley and Plains Miwok/Me-Wuk Peoples, and the Patwin Wintun Peoples. Dr. Atallah is a diaspora Palestinian with cherished roots within the Indigenous villages in the mountains of Bethlehem, colonized Palestine.

Within his work on the DARA Collective, Dr. Atallah aims to engage decolonial, narrative, and community-based participatory approaches to critical inquiry. As an activist, scholar, researcher, practitioner, educator, learner, and healer, Dr. Atallah strives to support and to contribute to understandings of intergenerational resistance, healing justice and decolonization/decoloniality. Dr. Atallah is a dedicated father to his beloved children. He has lived with joy and commitment to community in Boston, Massachusetts for nearly 20 years.

Dr. Atallah's website

Graduate Students of DARA Collective

Rhyann Robinson

Rhyann holds a Masters of Science in Psychological Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as well as a Bachelors of Science in Psychology and Ethnic Studies from Santa Clara University. Originally from the Southside of Chicago, Rhyann is currently a 5th year doctoral student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research interests include anticolonial resistance among those on the frontlines of oppression and healing justice for BIPOC folks. In community with the DARA Collective, Rhyann aims to incorporate aspects of decolonial praxis and healing justice in the design of her research with the goal of advancing equitable systems, producing policy changes, and informing interventions.

Michelle Gabriela Del Rio

Michelle is a first-generation Mexican immigrant and a 5th year doctoral student in the Clinical Psychology doctoral program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research interests include people of color’s self-conceptualization, identity formation, and construction of counternarratives as powerful tools of liberation and struggle against colonialism and white supremacy. Michelle hopes to incorporate decolonial community building, radical love, and praxis to the healing and liberation of oppressed peoples across borders.

Sarah is a Palestinian Muslim and a 2nd year doctoral student in UMass Boston’s Clinical Psychology program. She completed her undergraduate education and received her bachelor's degree in psychology from Rutgers University - New Brunswick. Her research interests center the psychological impact of ethnopolitical and colonial violence on refugee and indigenous children and adolescents, with a secondary interest in substance use as a form of self-treatment in all age demographics. She envisions her contribution to a practice that implements decolonial thought and psychological analysis fueled by values of actionable and radical justice, self-determination, racial and economic equality, and liberation.