Current & Former Doctoral Students



  • Current
    Doctoral Students

  • Gequasha "GQ" Collins

    Applied Social & Cultural Psychology
    Doctoral Student
    An FIU Inclusion Fellowship recipient, GQ entered the doctoral program in Fall 2021. Her work examines cross cultural constructions of various types of mental illness at individual and community levels. GQ will focus primarily on the impact of these values across LatinE peer and familial networks across the United States. Currently, she is developing a quantitative stigma study to assess perceptions of peers with serious mental illness in LatinE emerging adult populations.
  • EDUARDO DE LA Vega-Taboada

    Developmental Psychology
    Doctoral Candidate
    A Tinker Foundation Field Research Grant Fellow, Eduardo is interested in identifying community safe spaces as sites for adolescent health social and emotional development. He has already completed a thesis that examined rural Afro Colombian adolescents' perceptions of safe spaces. Eduardo's disertation, funded by the FIU Doctoral Evidence Acquisition Fellowship extends this work by examining the role of soccer/ futbol youth leaders in creation of safe spaces in Colombia.
  • Hector Peguero

    Applied Social & Cultural Psychology
    Doctoral Student
    A CASE Dean's Distinguished Doctoral Fellow, Hector entered the doctoral program in Fall 2022. His research examines the intersections of health stigma and identity development among gender and sexually diverse individuals both the United States and India. A former Fulbright Fellow, Hector is building on his foundational research by seeking to identify common points of intervention for addressing stigma while increasing agency through health inequities education.
  • Juan Sebastian
    Castillo Perez

    Applied Social & Cultural Psychology
    Doctoral Student
    Juan entered the doctoral program in Fall 2021. Juan is using mixed methodologies to identify diverse Latino masculity norms and values across the Latin American diaspora, particularly in the United States and Latin America. He is especially interested in the ways in which nationality and ethnic cultural informs ideas about masculinity, and how these shape mental health well being and healthy relationship formation processes across diverse emerging adult Latino populations.
  • Jeffrey Pierre

    Applied Social & Cultural Psychology
    Doctoral Student
    Jeffrey entered the doctoral program in Fall 2022. His research examines meanings given to discipline cross culturally, with a focus on the role of accultration, national identity, and familial proceses. Jeffrey is particularly interested in exploring the ways contextual stressors experienced by diverse Black populations, such as racisim, acculturation, and language, inform theese phenomena . A Sant La Fellow,  his ultimate goal is to identify culturally appropriate approaches that center Haitian cultural values and socio historical realities. .