Devin G. Atallah

Assistant Professor, Clinical Psychology

Devin G. Atallah, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, which is on unceded lands of the Masssachusett, Pawtucket, Wampanoag, Nipmuck, and other Indigenous Peoples. Dr. Atallah is also currently a Research Fellow with the Institute for Social and Health Sciences at the University of South Africa.

Dr. Atallah is the founder and leader of the Decolonial Antiracism Research & Action (DARA) Collective for Healing & Liberation. Dr. Atallah is a multi-racial Palestinian living and working in the diaspora with Arab, Latinx, and European-American/white ancestry. Dr. Atallah was born in Sacramento, California, the lands of the Nisenan, the Southern Maidu, the Valley and Plains Miwok/Me-Wuk, and the Patwin Wintun Peoples.Within his work on the DARA Collective, Dr. Atallah aims to engage decolonial, narrative, and community-based participatory approaches to critical inquiry. Dr. Atallah strives to support and to contribute to understandings of intergenerational resistance and decolonization/decoloniality.

Dr. Atallah is blessed to be a devoted father in this life to his incredible children, and to be a fellow traveler and dedicated partner to his beloved.

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 6th 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 6th 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 3rd 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.