Faculty Specializations

Listed below are the areas of research and academic interests of the full-time faculty in the Barnard College Department of Psychology. 

Major Advisor

A student will be assigned a major advisor when she declares her major at the end of the sophomore year. The major advisor will approve her programs and monitor her progress with her requirements during the junior and senior years. All Barnard Psychology full time faculty members are familiar with the broad range of sub-disciplines within psychology and will generally be able to provide guidance in areas other than their own. Students whose advisor goes on leave for a semester or academic year will be assigned to a new advisor if necessary. 

Mentor for Independent Research

Getting involved in psychology outside of the classroom gives students the opportunity to learn what type of work they like and don't like, what professional environments best suit them, and with what populations they might like to interact and help. Additionally, working with a mentor or supervisor in a research/lab setting gives students a resource for stronger letters of recommendation. 

Professor Robert Brotherton studies the psychology of conspiracy theories, including political attitudes, distrust, belief formation, and magical thinking more generally. His approach spans social, cognitive, and personality psychology. Office: 415M Milbank; email: rbrother@barnard.edu

Professor Michelle Greene’s primary research goal is to understand the mechanisms that enable rapid, intelligent perception of our environment. Towards this end, they use machine learning and computer vision methods to model the information the human brain may use for visual understanding. Dr. Greene’s work addresses three specific questions: (1) What visual information does the world contain? (2) How do we use information from the world? (3) How does visual perception interface with memory and other cognitive processes, including categorization, attention, and memory?

Professor Tovah Klein's general research area is the development of children's social relationships.  Specifically, her work focuses on how parents' understanding of relationships may be related to how they socialize their children.  Current research examines toddlers' early peer interactions and parental factors, which contribute to these early peer relationships. (On Leave AY24-25) Office: 415M Milbank; email: tklein@barnard.edu

Professor Colin Wayne Leach is a social and personality psychologist who studies status and morality in identity, emotion, and motivation.  He is also interested in protest & resistance; Prejudice, stereotypes, ...isms; Meta-theory, methods, and statistics; and transdisciplinary approaches (especially Africana Studies and Data Science).  His latest research examines sentiment regarding violence and protest, using micro (physiology, neuroscience, self-report) and macro (Twitter, news media, iconography) methods. Office: 276 Lefrak; email: cleach@barnard.edu

Professor Ken Light’s general area of research is in behavioral neuroscience, with an emphasis on individual differences in intelligence in mice. He has also conducted studies on visual illusions in humans and the genetic and molecular bases of learned fear in mice. Office: 415M Milbank; email: klight@barnard.edu

Professor Koleen McCrink’s research focuses on the development of numerical cognition from infancy through adulthood. Specifically, she is interested in how we are able to not only represent different amounts, but also perform operations over these representations. By studying why and how infants, children, and adults perform mathematical operations, we can learn about the cognitive architecture of the mind – and how this changes as a function of experience, maturation, and culture. *Department Chair* Office: 415K Milbank; email: kmccrink@barnard.edu

Professor Erica Musser’s research focuses on the nature and clinical presentation of neurodevelopmental disabilities with a focus on ADHD, Autism, and related disabilities. As a licensed clinical psychologist, Dr. Musser is interested in improving understanding of these conditions to enhance assessment and diagnosis, as well as to develop more tailored and neuroaffirming care for individuals with neurodevelopmental disabilities.  Office: 415 H-1 Milbank; emusser@barnard.edu

Professor Robert Remez studies healthy human adults, in particular, the way individuals of this exotic species communicate with one another. His experiments usually examine a psychological aspect of speaking and listening to speech, and sometimes incorporate sounds produced by computers, musicians, twins, and Brooklynites. Office: 415C Milbank; email: rremez@barnard.edu

Professor Mariel Roberts is an experimental psychologist who studies visual perception in humans. She uses the power of behavioral psychophysics to investigate how spatial attention affects the earliest stages of our vision, including our eye movements, and to explore the limits of adult neuroplasticity. She has conducted studies with neurotypical children and adults, as well as adults with ADHD and amblyopia, a neurodevelopmental visual disorder characterized by weaker vision in one eye.  Office: 245 Barnard Hall;  email: mrobert@barnard.edu 

Professor Ann Senghas’ area of specialty is language development.  Her research investigates the manner in which young children learn to understand and to produce language.  Her current research follows a developing language that is taking its form from the innovations of young learners, a sign language produced by a community of deaf children in Nicaragua.  (On Leave FA24) Office: 415G Milbank; email: asenghas@barnard.edu

Professor Lisa Son investigates human learning and memory, with a special interest in metacognition, or self-reflection. She has recently focused on the type of biases and illusions that can hinder long-term retention, such as overconfidence, hindsight bias, and the impostor phenomenon. Her investigations have been conducted cross-culturally, and have suggested that the various emotional expressions we display might impact the choices we make when interacting with others. Her current research goal includes examining ways in which to extend curiosity, persistence, and, as a result, performance, for all learners. Office: 415F Milbank; email: lson@barnard.edu

Professor Kathleen Taylor is now a clinical psychologist after a 20+ year career in neuroscience research.  In addition to teaching she is part of a cognitive-behavioral therapy practice in New York City where she specializes in the treatment of trauma, and often works with  individuals with borderline personality disorder.  Professor Taylor is the Preclinical Adviser in the Psychology Department. Office: 415O Milbank; email: ktaylor@barnard.edu

Professor Katherine Thorson's research area is social psychology, and, broadly, her research investigates how people communicate with and influence each other. Some of her current research examines how people become synchronized in their physiological responses when interacting with one another, how people from different social groups work together, and how peers interact with each other in learning environments. Her research utilizes psychophysiological and advanced quantitative methods to understand how people's psychological and physiological experiences are affected by others. (On Leave AY24-25) Office: 415D Milbank; email: kthorson@barnard.edu

Professor Kate Turetsky studies social psychological processes within and between social groups. Her research broadly examines the role of the social environment -- including friends, teachers, classrooms, and the media -- in intergroup relations, inequality, stress, and education. Recent projects examine how friendships affect persistence and performance, how disparities in social connection advantage some groups over others, and how teachers contribute to educational inequality. She uses methods such as social network analysis, randomized field experiments, and analysis of naturalistic data sources, with the ultimate goal of identifying novel avenues for social psychological interventions that promote greater equity, wellbeing, and success. Office: 415A Milbank; email: kturetsk@barnard.edu 

Professor Tara Well's research focuses on the psychology of reflections and social visibility. Her 2022 book is titled, Mirror Meditation: The Power of Neuroscience and Self-Reflection to Overcome Self-Criticism, Gain Confidence and See Yourself with Compassion, and her current book project, "Visibility: Navigating the Dilemma of Being Seen" address the psychological and social challenges of being visible in the modern world. Professor Well is a personality psychologist with expertise in the areas of motivation, health psychology, and leadership studies. Office: 415E Milbank; email: twell@barnard.edu

Professor Michael Wheaton's research focuses on the nature and treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and related conditions. As a clinical psychologist, Dr. Wheaton is most interested in improving psychotherapy for these conditions, particularly cognitive-behavioral interventions. He is also interested in the cognitive mechanisms that underlie these disorders. Office 415J Milbank; email: mwheaton@barnard.edu; *Department Vice Chair for Student Advising