Devin George Atallah

Associate Professor, Clinical Psychology

Devin G. Atallah, PhD is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, which is on unceded lands belonging to the Masssachusett, Pawtucket, Wampanoag, Nipmuck, and other Indigenous Peoples of Massachusetts. 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 shataat/diaspora. His paternal ancestors are rooted in the villages of Beit-Jala and Bethlehem in Palestine, with generations of connections to Palestinian diasporic communities in Chile/Wallmapu in South America. His maternal ancestors are Haole and Pukikī (of white colonizer and Portuguese migrant worker descent) to the unceded lands belonging to the Kanaka Maoli Peoples of Hawai'i. Within his work on the DARA Collective, Dr. Atallah aims to engage decolonial, narrative, and community-based 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 companion to his beloved life partner.

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.