Dr. Ginny Ramseyer Winter is an Associate Professor in the University of Missouri School of Social Work, where she began in 2015. Dr. Ramseyer Winter’s primary research agenda, grounded in theory and the strengths perspective, is informed by her practice experience as a human sexuality educator and sexual and reproductive justice advocacy work. Her research examines body image in relation to health disparities among marginalized individuals and communities. She is particularly interested in intervention development and effecting change to advance social justice around issues of body image and health.

Antoinette M. Landor is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at the University of Missouri. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia and completed a Eunice Kenney Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the impact of skin tone— conceptualized as a part of body image— and colorism on individual, relational, and family health and functioning. She also examines how sociocultural factors influence the sexual and romantic relationship behaviors of African American adolescents and young adults. Her work has appeared in top journals, such as Perspectives on Psychological Science, Journal of Adolescent Health, Journal of Youth and Adolescence and Archives of Sexual Behavior, and has been presented at domestic and international conferences, such as the European Congress of Psychology in Milan, Italy and the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development in Gold Coast, Australia. She has been interviewed by EBONY Magazine (readership of 11 million) and her research has been cited in national and international media outlets such as Psychology Today, NYMagazine, Salon, New York Daily News, and MedIndia:Network for Health. Dr. Landor’s work has received national awards, and her article— Landor & Barr, 2018—received the Wiley Publishing Certificate of Recognition as One of the Top Downloaded Articles (between January 2017-December 2018) from Journal of Family Theory & Review. Dr. Landor teaches thought-provoking courses on Black Families, Youth Culture, and Human Sexuality. In addition, she serves as a faculty mentor for MU’s McNair Scholars Program. Dr. Landor grew up in southern Louisiana, attended Grambling State University for her undergraduate studies, and is a proud and active member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated and the Links, Incorporated. In her spare time, she enjoys international travel, listening to music, and shopping.

CBIRP Affiliated Faculty

Wendy Auslander is the Barbara A. Bailey Professor of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis whose broad interests are in health behavior research and health promotion. Specifically she is interested in mental health and health disparities among vulnerable populations, such as adolescents with exposure to abuse and violence, and minority populations. Her passion is adapting and implementing interventions to reduce health and mental health disparities. Recent research involved a trauma treatment study for girls in child welfare funded by CDC, and studies on the mechanisms by which childhood trauma impacts behavioral, mental health, and sexual and drug-related risk behaviors among child welfare-involved youth. Previously, she conducted an RCT targeting dietary changes in obese African American women at risk for diabetes. Previously she has served in leadership roles for several NIH-funded centers at Washington University funded by NIDA, NIMH, and NIDDK, as well as Director of the Ph.D. program.

Meghan M. Gillen, Associate Professor of Psychology at Penn State Abington, is a developmental psychologist who studies body image and physical appearance issues. Some recent research projects have focused on body image and sexuality, women’s body image in the postpartum period, tanning behavior, and positive body image. The common thread through these projects is to understand how we can improve body image and ultimately contribute to greater health and well-being. Her research reflects the CBIRP’s mission to foster better body image for all. She frequently collaborates with Dr. Ramseyer Winter and is excited to be a part of this team.

Aubrey Jones earned her Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee, College of Social Work in 2020. Dr. Jones has research interests in women’s health primarily as it pertains to maternal health, family health, and rural access to healthcare. Now affiliated with the center as a faculty member at the University of Kentucky, Dr. Jones first became affiliated with the Center as a doctoral student.

Shanna K. Kattari, PhD, MEd, CSE, ACS (she/her/hers) is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, and the Department of Women’s Studies (by courtesy). A queer, White, Jewish, cisgender, disabled, chronically ill Femme, her practice and community background is as a board certified sexologist, certified sexuality educator, and social justice advocate. Dr. Kattari’s extant research focuses on understanding how power, privilege and oppression systematically marginalize, exclude, and discriminate against people regarding their identities/expressions through negative attitudes, policies reinforcing oppression, oppressive actions and isolation. Her work centers on disability and ableism, and transgender/nonbinary (TNB) identities and transphobia, using an intersectional lens. Recently, she has focused on the health disparities among TNB communities, across physical and behavioral health, as well as working with the community through community based participatory research to better understand how the lack of inclusive providers has increased these disparities. She is also interested in examining sexuality in marginalized communities, particularly disabled adults and LGBTQIA2S+ individuals. In her work, Dr. Kattari strongly values translational research that benefits the communities being researched, and strongly believes in making research accessible to not only academics but also to society at large. She is also committed to engaging, innovative education and pedagogy, multi-level mentorship models, and supporting individuals from a variety of marginalized identities in entering, navigating, and succeeding in the Academy.

Jane McElroy wants people to maintain good health, especially as they age. She understands that by making smart lifestyle choices, people can stay healthy and help prevent many chronic diseases from developing. Among the many choices people make, her focus is on healthy weight, physical activity, and smoking cessation. Her expertise relies on survey construction, study designs, and enrollment/retention of study participants. In her research, she is studying environmental exposures, particularly metals, health outcomes (eg, cancer etiology, hypertension), and patient-centered care within the cancer continuum to improve health, especially among SGM and African American individuals.

Elizabeth O’Neill is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Washburn University, and has a PhD in Social Work from the University of Kansas. She is a health disparities researcher focused on the promotion of health equity and personal, social, and economic well-being. Her research stresses inter-relationships among different areas of health, and has focused specifically on relationships between body image and health, as well as on the physical health of adults with serious mental illness. In addition to her academic and research experience, Dr. O’Neill has worked directly with foster youth, adults with HIV/AIDS and serious mental illness, and in hospital settings. Her practice experience drives her research and her passion for recognizing and understanding the inter-related and complex nature of an individual’s health and well-being.

Megan Paceley is an Associate Professor at the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare. Her scholarship addresses the relationship between the social environment and sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth’s health and well-being. She has a particular interest in the role of communities and how they enable or mitigate stigma and marginalization to affect the well-being of SGM youth. Currently, she is collaborating with scholars at the CBIRP to establish greater understanding of the connections between transgender youth’s social environments (family, school, and community) and their body image or disordered eating behaviors. Dr. Paceley’s goal is to implement and evaluate prevention or early intervention strategies to promote more accepting social environments and reduce the incidence of health disparities among SGM youth.

Sarah Piligram is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Body image research is an integral piece of the overall health and wellbeing of adolescents. Sarah Pilgrim’s scholarship primarily focuses on the sexual health and decision making of adolescents residing in foster care. More recently, her focus has broadened to include body image as a potential protective factor for adolescents residing in foster care. Adolescents residing in foster care have a considerable number of risk factors that could potentially lead to poor outcomes in the future; however, the inclusion of body image and other strengths related protective factors show promise in potentially reducing certain risk factors.

Erin Robinson is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Missouri and identifies as a public health social worker and gerontologist. Robinson’s primary research focus is on older adult health. Specifically, she has conducted research on HIV prevention among older adults. Through her research, Dr. Robinson has identified that intentional conversations with older adult patients about issues related to HIV/AIDS and sexual health is associated with increasing one’s knowledge of the disease, their perceived susceptibility, and their likelihood of talking with their sexual partners about prevention. In addition, Dr. Robinson has also conducted research on disaster preparedness among older adults living in rural areas. Dr. Robinson will contribute her expertise in older adult health to the Center for Body Image Research & Policy’s vision of improving body image, health, and wellness for individuals, families, and communities.

Lindsay Rae Ruhris an Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She holds a master’s degree in social work (MSW) from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. She also holds a master’s degree in public policy administration (MPPA) from the University of Missouri – St. Louis. Dr. Ruhr earned her PhD in social work from the University of Missouri in 2016. Her scholarship focuses on sexual and reproductive health as it relates to body image. She is particularly interested in contraceptive choice, fear of weight gain, menstruation stigma, and abortion stigma.

Justin Sigoloff is the Co-Director of Adroit Studios as well as a Doctoral Candidate studying Serious Games in the School of Information Sciences and Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He received his Masters in Media Literacy from Webster University. His research interests include not just how best to design and develop games with learning outcomes, but also how such games can change how players view themselves, their ability to perform in any given situation and the world around them. He has spent the last five years serving as the Creative Director for a serious game named Mission HydroSci, an I3 and IES funded serious game for middle-school students that teach water science and scientific argumentation.

Michelle Teti is an Associate Professor of Health Sciences in the School of Health Professions at the University of Missouri. She is the director of the Bachelor of Health Science in Public Health Program, and a Program Affiliate in the Black Studies Program. Dr. Michelle Teti’s educational accomplishments include a Master of Public Health (MPH) and a Doctorate in Community Health and Prevention (DrPH) from Drexel University in Philadelphia. She has also completed Visiting Professorships at the Center for AIDS Prevention at the University of California, San Francisco, in 2010-12 and 2015. The premise of her work is that sick and disenfranchised people matter and know best what is needed to solve their complex health problems. She focuses on inquiries of how health disparities and social vulnerabilities (poverty, racism, stigma, homophobia, sexism, etc.) affect individuals’ health decisions. She is an expert in participatory research and in using qualitative and visual patient-driven methods to allow the experiences of people to inform innovative public health questions and solutions. Dr. Teti’s work has been disseminated in over 50 peer-reviewed publications and numerous national and international conferences.

Fang Wang is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Information Technology / Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the College of Engineering at the University of Missouri. Her research interests include simulation software development, Virtual Reality applications, mobile app development and image processing. She is actively involved in utilizing innovative technology as an intervention and education means to improve the understanding of body image and its implication in the health and well beings of a person. Before joining MU, she worked in Motorola, Freescale and Ansys as research and development engineer.

CBIRP Students

Amanda is an MSW/PhD student in the School of Social Work at the University of Missouri. She received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Wichita State University and her Master’s degree in Psychological Science with a Developmental emphasis from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. Her primary research interests include sex education, body image, and sexual health.

Marquisele Mercedes is a doctoral student at the Brown University School of Public Health. She is broadly interested in weight stigma’s connection to the conceptualization and promotion of health in medical care, research, policy, and public health institutions and initiatives. Her work is greatly influenced by fat studies and scholarship on race/ism, as she is invested in creating safer spaces for people of color living in larger bodies.

Erin Nolen is a PhD student at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work from Baylor University. Her research aims to address food insecurity and its disproportionate affect on women and families of color, and to investigate the multidimensional aspects of positive body image and embodiment as both a form of resistance and a mediator of health behaviors.

Kelsey Rose is a Master of Public Health student in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at The University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the prevention of eating disorders and disordered eating, with a specific interest in promoting body diversity and challenging weight biased beliefs.

Michaella Ward earned her MSW and MPH from the University of Missouri in 2019 after graduating from Louisiana Tech University with a BA in Sociology and History in 2015. She was the first student to complete her final MSW practicum with the Center for Body Image Research & Policy. She is now a PhD student at Indiana University’s School of Public Health where she continues to promote body positivity and examine body image in the context of sexual health and education as well as identity, relationship, and sexual development.