Jioni Lewis, assistant professor of psychology, was recently named the recipient of the nationally competitive 2015 Carolyn Payton Early Career Professional Award from Division 35 of the American Psychological Association. The award recognizes the achievement of a black woman who is an early career psychologist, specifically for published work addressing the concerns of black women and girls. The award to Lewis acknowledges her research to develop a measure of gendered racial microaggressions in the social interactions of black women.
Lewis recently developed and published a self-report instrument to measure black women’s experiences with gendered racial microaggressions, which she defined as subtle and everyday verbal, behavioral, and environmental expressions of oppression based on the intersection of one’s race and gender. The Gendered Racial Microaggressions Scale (GRMS) is a tool to measure the frequency and stress appraisal of perceived gendered racial microaggressions. She is also supported by the National Institutes of Health to study the long term health impact of racial microaggressions in African American adults.