Biography
Hi!
I'm a PhD student in the Clinical-Community Psychology program; I work under the direction of Dr. Nicole Allen, on the Action Research & Collaboration team. My pronouns are she/her/hers.
Gender-based violence can be understood, studied, and prevented. I'm excited about studying how we can support community efforts. I'm most interested in research involving community and societal-level interventions to prevent and respond to domestic and sexual violence, and ways to support providers who implement these interventions.
Currently, I'm a research assistant for a statewide evaluation project that partners with the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault (ICASA) and the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) to investigate sexual violence prevention efforts across Illinois. I've studied preventionist conceptualizations of sexual violence, and innovation implementation climate in moving to the outer layers of the social ecology to prevent sexual violence. Current/upcoming work with ICASA and IDPH also involves studying alcohol serving establishment leader/owners' attitudes towards sexual violence prevention, as well as how establishment typology and organizational change readiness may relate to current prevention practices, motivation to engage in sexual violence prevention, and comfort for new prevention practices. Within this partnership, I am also studying multi-stakeholder perceptions of leadership and engagement in community-informed sexual violence prevention efforts.
Most of my work is quite applied. My applied work (as an evaluator, as a clinician) inspires my research, and vice versa. For example, I've supported a local sexual violence-domestic violence agency's work to bring sexual violence prevention to a public housing area with research/evaluation tools, and I enjoy working on logic model creation with nonprofits. In the clinic, I especially enjoy working with youth who have been exposed to violence, healthy relationships/social-sexual health education (centering neurodiverse youth), and prevention/education interventions with couples.
Education
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, M.S. in Psychology
Wellesley College, B.A. in Psychology
University of Pennsylvania, Certificate in Professional Writing
Awards and Honors
2023 Herman Eisen Award (recognizing professional contributions to psychology; “reflecting a commitment to mental health needs in Champaign-Urbana”)
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Impact Award (spring 2021; shared with Brett Bergmann & Maya Marder)
2020 Child Maltreatment and Interpersonal Violence Special Interest Group (Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies) Poster Award
Women Organized Against Rape Volunteer of the Year (2018)
2017 Student Mental Health Advocate of the Year Award (Jordan Porco Foundation)
Courses Taught
This fall/spring, I am thrilled to be teaching our service learning course, in partnership with Cunningham Children's Home.
I recommend checking out Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program (URAP). In the past, I have been a mentor in this program. http://undergradresearch.illinois.edu/programs/urap.html.
Check out more research opportunities with the Action Research & Collaboration group here: https://actionresearch.web.illinois.edu/.
External Links
Highlighted Publications
Check out my Google Scholar for a complete list of publications. Below are a few selected publications.
Rieger, A., Campbell, J., & Garthe, R. C. (2024). Connecting to community: Violence prevention barriers, geography, and preventionist perceptions of community leadership and opportunities. Health Promotion Practice. doi:10.1177/15248399231222468
Rieger, A., Blackburn, A. M., Nag, A., Holland, H., & Allen, N. E. (2023). Contradictions in change: Ecological factors in the implementation of outer layer sexual violence prevention. American Journal of Community Psychology.
Garthe, R. C., Rieger, A., Goffnet, J., Kaur, A., Sarol, J. N., Blackburn, A. M., Kim, S., Hereth, J., & Kennedy, A. C. (2022). Grade-level differences of peer and dating victimization among transgender, gender expansive, female, and male adolescents. Journal of LGBTQ Youth. doi:10.1080/19361653.2022.2132443
Nnawulezi, N., Rieger, A., Shaw, J., Greeson, M., Lichty, L., & Allen, N. E. (2022). Reflecting and rejuvenating our work, together: One team’s consideration of AJCP publications on gender-based violence. American Journal of Community Psychology 70(3-4), 255-264. Doi:10.1002/ajcp.12603
Rieger, A., Blackburn, A. M., Bystrynski, J. B., Garthe, R. C., & Allen, N. E. (2021). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender-based violence in the United States: Framework and policy recommendations. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.