Skip to main content

Helen A Neville

Professor

Biography

Helen A. Neville is a professor of Educational Psychology and African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before coming to Illinois in 2001, she was on the faculty in Psychology, Educational and Counseling Psychology, and Black Studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia where she co-founded and co-directed the Center for Multicultural Research, Training, and Consultation. Dr. Neville has held leadership positions on campus and nationally.  She was a Provost Fellow and participated in the CIC/Big 10 Academic Alliance Academic Leadership Academy. Currently she is the president-elect of the Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race, which is a division of the American Psychological Association (APA). She has co-edited 5 books and (co)-authored nearly 90 journal articles and book chapters in the areas of race, racism, and racial identity, and diversity issues related to well-being. Dr. Neville has been recognized for her research and mentoring efforts including receiving the Association of Black Psychologists’ Distinguished Psychologist of the Year award, the APA Minority Fellowship Award, Dalmas Taylor Award for Outstanding Research Contribution, APA Graduate Students Kenneth and Mamie Clark Award, the APA Division 45 Charles and Shirley Thomas Award for mentoring/contributions to African American students/community, and the Winter Roundtable Janet E. Helms Mentoring Award. 

Her current research interests center on two interrelated areas of racial ideology: Black racial ideology: Black racial identity and color-blind racial ideology.  Her work has appeared in a wide range of journals including, The Journal of Counseling Psychology, Journal of Black Studies, Journal of Black Psychology, and Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology.  She served as the Associate Editor of The Counseling Psychologist and the Journal of Black Psychology and she currently serves on the board of a number of scholarly journals.  She is the lead editor of the Handbook of African American Psychology .

Research Interests

Race and racism, racial identity, African American Psychology

Additional Campus Affiliations

Professor, Educational Psychology
Professor, African American Studies
Professor, Psychology
Professor, Gender and Women's Studies
Professor, Center for African Studies

Recent Publications

Gone, J. P., Neville, H., Huang, L. N., Chang, D. F., & Bryant, L. L. (2024). Leadership, Impact, and Institutional Change: A Community Conversation. In D. F. Chang, & L. L. Bryant (Eds.), Transforming Careers in Mental Health for BIPOC: Strategies to Promote Healing and Social Change (pp. 297-312). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003309796-31

Hoang, T. M. H., Neville, H. A., Smith, A., Valgoi, M., Schlosser, M., & Cha-Jua, S. K. (2024). Police Recruits’ Cognitive Engagement in a Racial Literacy Education Program: Does Racial Ideology Matter? Race and Justice, 14(4), 445-464. https://doi.org/10.1177/21533687221117279

Lee, B. A., & Neville, H. A. (2024). The iBelong Scale: Construction and Validation of a Measure of Racial–Ethnic–Cultural Belonging. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 71(3), 139-154. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000716

Neville, H. A., Lee, B. A., & Maghsoodi, A. H. (2024). Decolonizing and building liberatory psychological sciences. In L. Comas-Díaz, H. Y. Adames, & N. Y. Chavez-Dueñas (Eds.), Decolonial psychology: Toward anticolonial theories, research, training, and practice (pp. 89-118). (Cultural, racial, and ethnic psychology). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000376-005

Neville, H., Lewis, J. A., & French, B. (2024). Integrating Social Justice, Black Feminist, and Radical Healing Mentoring: Lessons for Transformational Change. In D. F. Chang, & L. L. Bryant (Eds.), Transforming Careers in Mental Health for BIPOC: Strategies to Promote Healing and Social Change (pp. 179-187). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003309796-19

View all publications on Illinois Experts