About the Lab

Welcome to the Research on Social Intersections at Tennessee (ReSIsT) Lab!

The ReSIsT Lab was founded in 2017 by Dr. Kirsten A. Gonzalez when she joined the counseling psychology faculty as a tenure-track assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The ReSIsT Lab is a team of researchers broadly studying the psychological well-being of marginalized communities including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC). We are equally passionate about social justice ally work.  In this avenue, we develop and test the efficacy of interventions designed to reduce prejudice and build social justice allies in privileged communities.

Our scholarship focuses on challenging oppressive policies and systems affecting marginalized individuals across sexual orientation, gender identity, race, and ethnicity; and developing, delivering, and assessing interventions to build social justice advocates within privileged groups. We carry out this work within three content areas: 1) psychological well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals and the health of these communities; 2) Latinx migration and stress, including the structural barriers and lack of access to care for immigrant Latinx transgender people; and 3) social justice ally development. As mixed methods researchers, our scholarship informed by social justice aims to center the experiences of marginalized communities broadly, and LGBTQ and Latinx communities specifically. Using critical intersectionality frameworks, our research explores systemic oppression experienced by marginalized people at the intersections of sexual orientation, gender identity, race, and ethnicity. 

Our identities as social justice advocates and scholar/practitioner change-agents direct our scholarship on how to work with privileged individuals to use their access to create structural and policy level societal changes to alleviate the minority stress experienced by marginalized individuals. From a majority or systemic perspective, this scholarship explores social justice ally development and how psychologists can help privileged people shift their attitudes and especially their behaviors to focus on activism on behalf of oppressed communities.

The Psychological Well-Being of LGBTQ Communities

Our research has explored the psychological well-being of LGBTQ people, specifically how sociopolitical climates negatively impact LGBTQ people. Our scholarship also illuminates the protective factors that work to counteract the negative impact of anti-LGBTQ climates on the well-being of LGBTQ communities.

The impact of Sociopolitical and Cultural Events on LGBTQ People

We have published empirical research on how LGBTQ people were impacted by: 1) the Pulse nightclub shooting, 2) the election of Trump as an anti-LGBTQ president, 3) the Trump presidential administration, and 4) the COVID-19 pandemic. Our scholarship illuminates the need for continued research on LGBTQ BIPOC using an intersectional framework for understanding their experiences and needs, with a specific focus on a group under-represented in research: immigrant Latinx transgender and nonbinary people. Our research highlights the structural inequities that reinforce oppressions and hinder wellness of immigrant Latinx transgender people. Our findings illustrate how anti-LGBTQ politicians exacerbate distal and proximal stressors experienced by LGBTQ people. We also explore narratives of resistance and resilience in how LGBTQ people continued to experience and cope with these stressors during Trump’s presidency. LGBTQ people used community connections, self-care and self-preservation activities, and activism to cope during Trump’s presidential administration. This scholarship directs an affirmative-care approach to clinical practice with LGBTQ clients.

LGBTQ Resilience

LGBTQ people have distinctly positive experiences of their identities across race, ethnicity, gender identity, and sexuality. Centering narratives of LGBTQ strengths, resistance, and resilience is important to dispelling negative stereotypes and educating the general public about the lived realities of LGBTQ+ BIPOC people. We are particularly interested in exploring resilience during oppressive sociopolitical climates and recently published an article on LGBTQ resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research contributes new knowledge about LGBTQ wellness while lifting the voices of LGBTQ people who are often silenced, made invisible, and neglected.

Bi+ Community and Belonging

Our research highlights the lived experiences of bisexual, pansexual, queer, and fluid community members who are often neglected and ignored in the psychological LGBTQ literature. Our work in this domain has explored the immutability of bisexuality as a legitimate and valid sexual identity category, the real barriers bi+ BIPOC college students experience in accessing adequate and appropriate wellness services, and how bi+ individuals define and locate bi+ belonging and community connection. This research informs our understanding that, despite experiencing anti-bisexual stigma, bi+ erasure, and inadequate resources, bi+ individuals are resilient.  

Latinx Communities, Migration, and Stress

There is urgent need to explore migratory and acculturative stress of marginalized Latinx community members, including the Puerto Rican community in Puerto Rico and the diaspora of the community in the U.S. mainland. This research bridges science, practice, and advocacy to identify clinical and policy level interventions to alleviate the migratory stress experienced by Puerto Ricans entering the United States mainland from Puerto Rico. With colleagues, we explored how Puerto Rican community members living on the mainland United States were impacted by Hurricane Maria and the implications for understanding how counseling psychologists may effectively provide mental health support to Puerto Ricans. We also explored the pre-migration conditions and reasons for migration with a sample of Puerto Ricans who migrated from the island of Puerto Rico to the mainland United States. We found that pre-migration experiences included significant economic and social disruptions, family stresses and strains, and the impacts of political corruption on the island. Using the findings from this research, we have begun to develop a new model of colonial migration to illustrate how colonization impacts the migratory journey of Puerto Ricans.

Social Justice Ally Development

As counseling psychologists, we see part of our responsibility to work with traditionally privileged people to cultivate social justice supportive attitudes and behaviors, and support activists working toward systemic change. Social justice allies who are members of privileged social groups play an integral role in fighting oppression and changing oppressive policies and practices, ultimately improving the lives of marginalized community members. Building on psychotherapy outcome-based research, our scholarship explores the most effective “ingredients” for reducing prejudice, providing a new framework for reducing prejudice and cultivating allies.

Recognizing that social dominance is a larger sociopolitical issue, we recently explored the tools counseling psychologists have for engaging in social justice advocacy efforts and combating white supremacy. Our findings suggest that rejecting racial progress narratives, exploring whiteness with white psychotherapy clients, and centering white supremacy as a key issue in the field of counseling psychology are crucial next steps toward racial justice and social justice advocacy. Building on these findings, we are currently writing a paper detailing a comparative analysis of helpful and unhelpful ally behaviors from the perspective of LGBTQ BIPOC, Heterosexual BIPOC, and LGBTQ White people. This research centers the voices of marginalized community members to provide concrete and measurable behaviors that social justice allies can engage in during their advocacy efforts to more effectively support marginalized communities.

Future Research Plans

LGBTQ Intervention Research

As counseling psychologists with scientist-practitioner-advocate identities, our future scholarship will focus on developing and testing interventions that cultivate wellness for LGBTQ BIPOC. LGBTQ BIPOC face unique challenges and stressors at the intersection of their sexual orientation, gender identity, race, and ethnicity. Our future research involves developing and testing positive interventions to counteract the negative effect of oppressive climates and bolster positive identity, resilience, and liberation of LGBTQ BIPOC. We are interested in exploring the physiological changes that occur during these interventions and aim to use biomarker data to track how these interventions impact the physical wellness of LGBTQ BIPOC.

Latin American Diaspora

We are exploring belonging and community connection for Latinx college students at a predominantly white institution (PWI) in Tennessee. Our findings suggest that belonging is complicated for Latinx young adults living in the south who feel pressured to assimilate to mainstream dominant culture. Emerging from this research is the complicated negotiation of Latinx identity for young adults who do not speak fluent Spanish. Given the history of the United States rooted in colonization of indigenous communities, our future scholarship aims to explore the Latin American diaspora and how immigration of Latinx individuals can lead to a sense of cultural homelessness and a struggle to find belonging and connection within Latinx communities in the United States. Our research will explore how this struggle is passed down generationally and leads to disconnection from Latin American roots and decreased physical and psychological wellness for Latinx young adults.   

Addressing White Supremacy in Psychotherapy

We are currently conducting research to explore how licensed counseling psychologists may effectively address white supremacy in psychotherapy. We notice that clinicians-in-training struggle to talk about whiteness with clients. White guilt, silence, and fragility often function as barriers to prevent white clinicians from deepening their clinical work around whiteness, white supremacy, and race with their clients. As scientist-practitioner-advocates, counseling psychologists can use the therapy room to explore manifestations of power and privilege that reinforce white supremacy, helping clients to increase their critical consciousness and unlearn the harmful messages they internalize around race and other social locations. There is a gap in the literature in exploring this phenomenon and our research agenda addresses this gap with scholarship to inform new models of clinical training and provide counseling psychologists with better tools to address white supremacy in their practices.