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.
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 4th 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 4th 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.
Rayyan Alfatafta
Rayyan Alfatafta is a transgender Muslim Palestinian man and a 3rd year doctoral student in the Clinical Psychology doctoral program at the University of Massachusetts - Boston. He completed his undergraduate education at Skidmore College with a B.A. in Psychology. His research interests include decolonial love and desire, radical imagination, and transgenerational forms of resistance as tools for liberation and healing for all colonized communities, particularly for Palestinian and queer Palestinian communities. He believes in the power of indigenous ancestral wisdom, community-sourced knowledge, and radical solidarity across struggle and borders, in creating counter spaces of healing and love that actively dismantle and fight against all forms of colonialism, state violence, and white supremacy.
Sarah Farhan
Sarah is a Palestinian Muslim and a 1st 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.
Postdoctoral Fellows & Community Researchers: Three Co-Founders of DARA Collective
Hana R. Masud, PhD
Researcher
Amatullah Mervin
Community Leader and Researcher
Former DARA Collective
Undergraduate Research Assistants (RAs)
Zaina Abdalla (DARA Collective RA from 2021-2022)