Jioni Lewis, assistant professor of psychology, has received two national awards for helping to advance the understanding of race and ethnicity.
The Association for Women in Psychology recently honored Lewis with the Women of Color Psychology Award, which recognizes scholarly work that significantly contributes to the understanding of the psychology of women of color.
She also received the Outstanding Contribution to Scholarship on Race and Ethnicity Award from the American Psychological Association’s Society of Counseling Psychology. The award honors the scholarly contributions that advance the field’s knowledge on race and ethnicity.
Lewis received both awards in connection to her research, through which she developed a measure of gendered racial microaggressions—subtle and everyday verbal, behavioral, and environmental expressions of oppression based on the intersection of one’s race and gender. The study, published last year, found that African-American women who reported a greater frequency of gendered racial microaggressions also reported greater psychological distress. She co-authored the study with Helen Neville, professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Lewis researches multicultural psychology, diversity, and social justice issues. Her work explores the influence of contemporary forms of racism and discrimination on health, with a focus on the intersection of subtle racism and sexism on the health of women of color.