Dr. Onnie Rogers, Principal Investigator of the DICE lab, is a developmental psychologist and identity scholar whose research curiosities converge at the intersection of human development, diversity and equity, and education. Dr. Rogers is interested in social and educational inequities and the mechanisms through which macro-level disparities are both perpetuated and disrupted at the micro-level of identities and relationships. Her research centers on the perspectives and experiences of racially/ethnically diverse children and adolescents. As a professor and a researcher, Dr. Rogers advocates for equity with an intersectional lens and does research on race and gender, and their role in identity development among youth in urban contexts. When not in the office, Dr. Rogers enjoys practicing yoga, eating chocolate, or shuttling her daughters (ages 6 and 10) to various activities. 

 Dr. Rogers was named a 2018 “Emerging Scholar” by Diverse Issues in Higher Education and a Rising Star of 2017 by the American Psychological Association. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, and her research publications appear in Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, Human Development, and Journal of Adolescent Research. She is a member of the Society for Research on Child Development, Society for Research on Adolescence, American Psychological Association, and American Educational Research Association. Dr. Rogers also serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Adolescent Research and the editorial board for Personality and Social Psychology Review.  

Education:
2004   B. A.  | Psychology | University of California Los Angeles
2012   Ph.D. | Applied Developmental Psychology | New York University
2013   Postdoctoral Fellow | University of Washington
– Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education
– National Science Foundation (NSF)
2019   Human Development and Social Policy Faculty Fellow | Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy

Vanessa Cordova, Lab Manager of the DICE Lab, is originally from Valparaiso, Chile. She completed her BA in Music Education at the University of Playa Ancha (Chile) and worked as an educator in both public and private schools. Vanessa migrated to the United States in 2018, and inspired by her lived experiences as a migrant, decided to pursue a career in psychology. Before joining the DICE Lab, her research focused on ethnic-racial identity development during middle childhood and the ethnic-racial socialization practices of Dominican mothers raising their children in the United States. Her research interests center around migration, identity development, social justice, power systems, and mental health, particularly during adolescence and emerging adulthood. In her free time, Vanessa enjoys playing music, hiking, traveling, and discovering new brunch spots!

Yerin is a Canady Diversity Science Fellow at the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University. She earned her B.A. in Psychology and Business from Korea University and M.A. and Ph.D. in Child Study and Human Development from Tufts University.  

Yerin is interested in disparities in adolescents’ opportunities for personal identity development. Her current work focuses on how stereotypes against minoritized social groups (e.g., youth of color, immigrants, lower class) challenge the identity exploration processes of young people. Ultimately, Yerin aims to produce research that informs policies and practices to help all youth thrive through supporting healthy identities that are flexible and align with their individual strengths and potential.  

Yerin is originally from Seoul, South Korea. In her free time, Yerin likes taking long walks to explore the city and listening to music (especially live!). 

Demond M. Hill, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. He holds a B.A. in Education from Edgewood College, an M.A. in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a Ph.D. in Social Welfare from the University of California, Berkeley. As a community-oriented interdisciplinary and applied scholar, Demond’s research lies at the intersection of emotion science, education, racial inequality, and well-being. Broadly, his work centers on the everyday social function of emotions—such as love, compassion, joy, rage, and shame—and how these emotions provide insight into the mental and emotional well-being of Black students. His research investigates how racialized and sociocultural contexts shape Black students’ emotional development, including their understanding, expression, and regulation of emotions. He also examines how various factors and processes within schools either promote or disrupt the human flourishing of Black students. His research is grounded in three primary areas:

1. Everydayness of Emotions: How emotions are deeply embedded in racialized and sociocultural contexts, how these emotions shape social interactions and, in turn, how these interactions affect the emotional and mental well-being of Black students.

2. Schools as Sites of Human Flourishing & Belonging/ness: How schools can serve as environments that support human flourishing and belonging, focusing on the mental and emotional climates shaped by the everyday emotional lives of students and teachers. By studying the everyday emotional interactions within schools—through objects, spaces, language, memory, culture, and relationships—he seeks to understand how these environments can be reimagined as spaces of belonging, healing, and holistic wellness.

3. Power of Play & Spaces for Play: How play and playfulness, as a transformative therapeutic and healing practice, can foster social and emotional well-being and promote a more diverse, healing oriented, and liberatory community with schools.

As a former educator and mental health professional, Demond is deeply committed to working alongside communities to co-create holistic, humanizing, and culturally relevant interventions that promote human flourishing and belonging. His efforts are focused on building therapeutic environments and public spaces that nurture the emotional and mental health of marginalized students, advancing a vision of greater communities as spaces of collective liberation and wellness.

Courtney is a PhD candidate advised by Dr. Onnie Rogers. Her research primarily focuses on racial-ethnic identity development in people with multiracial backgrounds. Through her research, she hopes to better understand how and why some multiracial individuals may develop a multiracial or a monoracial identity, considering the roles of family, peers, and broader society. She is also interested in unpacking what having a multiracial background during times of heightened racial tension means for individuals’ perceptions of their role in racial justice activism. Some of Courtney’s previous work has looked at how multiracial children talk about the racial identity-targeted messages that they receive from others, and to what extent those messages change over time. When she’s not working on her research, Courtney likes to hike, attempt new yarn crafts, and bake vegan goodies!

Brandon is a third-year Comparative Human Development Ph.D. student in the DICE lab. Broadly, his research focuses on using critical theories and perspectives to examine how ideologies of white supremacy manifest in human development, education, and identity. Currently, he is using qualitative and participatory methods to explore the possibilities and limits of schools in challenging whiteness and white identity. Outside of research, Brandon enjoys spending time with his partner and dog, going for runs, and trying new vegan restaurants.

Amanda-Joy Wright is a second-year Comparative Human Development Ph.D. student. Her work explores the impacts of specific social contexts and inequities on Black adolescents and adults’ psychopathology and mental well-being. In addition, she is interested in using an intersectional approach to explore the effects of gender and race-related adversity on Black girls and women’s identity development and mental well-being. Overall, she hopes to inform policy and programs that introduce or reimage better forms of support for people of color. Prior to starting her Ph.D., Amanda earned a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University. In Amanda’s free time, she enjoys traveling, cooking, photography, and live jazz music.

Ana is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Human Development. Her current research focuses on political action taken in schools by educators with non-dominant identities. In particular, she is interested in the possibilities of liberatory education as conceived by Black and queer educators who work in school spaces mired by logics of oppression and hegemony. Through her research, she hopes to locate the relationships between individual healing, interpersonal coalition, and system-wide transformation of educational organizations. In previous work, Ana has explored the creation and implementation of policies related to safety, restorative justice, and antiracism in schools.

Kenya Tuttle is a fifth-year doctoral student at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary in the area of Pastoral Theology, Personality and Culture. She is currently completing a 3^rd year clinical fellowship at the Center for Religion and Psychotherapy of Chicago.  Her research interest centers Black girls’ interpersonal relationships and attachment styles and ask how Black girls are affected by intergenerational trauma.  Prior to starting the PhD, Kenya taught middle school English and Social Studies for five years to Black and Hispanic girls, where she was also a girls’ basketball Coach and Audubon Conservation Leader. Before teaching, she was a Theological Editor for youth Sunday school materials for a Baptist denominational publishing house.  Kenya has a Master of Theological Studies degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School and a Master of Arts degree in Religion from Vanderbilt University. She was a student-athlete at Rice University obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Managerial Studies and Psychology. In her free time, Kenya enjoys traveling, holistic natural remedies, hiking, sports, and anything in nature or by the water.

Juan, a PhD student at Northwestern, is originally from Vallejo, California. He earned his B.A. in psychology at UC Davis in 2021 and worked in both research and clinical settings before deciding to pursue a PhD in 2023. Juan’s current research focuses on ethnic-racial identity development within societal, cultural, and interpersonal contexts for Latine adolescents and adults, ultimately with goals of understanding how these moments of identity exploration leads to a greater understanding of oneself, and how it informs socio-political action. Whenever Juan has time to relax, he enjoys learning guitar, spending time with his friends, going to concerts, and exploring new coffee spots.

Sarah Jennings is a second-year doctoral student in the Personality, Development, and Health Psychology PhD program at Northwestern University. Her research in narrative identity examines how people construct evolving, internalized life stories that integrate past events, present states, and imagined futures into their sense of self and meaning in life. Specifically, Sarah is interested in the psychosocial processes of how cultural scripts and structural forces shape narrative identity development, engaging both mixed-method and qualitative methodology in the study of identity from multiple intersecting levels of analysis. Her interdisciplinary vision for her work centers intersectionality, critical frameworks, and feminist approaches with the hopes of exploring how narrative can be a vehicle for individual and societal transformation to create new realities, futures, and selves. Her past work studied autobiographical reasoning and its relationship to well-being in emerging adults and midlife adults, as well as how social identity marginalization shapes narrative identity development and adjustment in college contexts. In her free time, Sarah enjoys film and theater, swapping stories with friends and family, and cheering on her hometown Philadelphia sports teams. 

Hello! My name is Elleiana Green (she/her/hers), and I’m a rising sophomore from Omaha, Nebraska. I’m a pre-law student double majoring in Journalism and Political Science with a minor in Spanish. With prior experience in diversity and inclusion, I hope to work toward expanding the rights of marginalized communities. As a research assistant in the DICE lab, I am really interested in investigating biracial identity crises in children growing up in predominantly white environments. After Northwestern, I plan to attend law school and focus on civil and human rights law. Someday, I would like to implement this research into creating educational policies to support the healthy identity development of Black children. In my free time, I enjoy spending time with my friends and family, cooking, reading, and taking long walks down Lake Michigan. 

Hi! My name is Elise Johnson. I recently graduated from Pomona College with a degree in Africana Studies and a minor in Mathematics. I am interested in doing research around education and racial identity development, particularly the intersection of those two topics. In the future, I hope to pursue a career in early-childhood education, either working in research or at a non-profit or school district so that I can help improve education access and help bring anti-racist pedagogy into classrooms as young as pre-school. In my free time I like to read, listen to music, and learn different crafts!