Trisha Dehrone is a NSF GRFP Fellow at University of Massachusetts–Amherst. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from Rutgers University – Newark, a M.S. in Social Psychology from University of Massachusetts–Amherst in 2022, and currently, she is a doctoral student in the Psychology of Peace and Violence Program. She became interested in improving relations between groups in tandem with advancing social justice efforts while interning in the White House's Office of Presidential Correspondence, managing casework for constituents interfacing with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) on a range of immigration and discrimination cases. 

Her research examines how people experience and navigate interactions with members of other groups. She is specifically interested in understanding the factors that may serve as barriers to or facilitate greater authenticity during these encounters, and whether cultivating greater authenticity may relate to greater feelings of intergroup closeness and empowerment. In her graduate work has also she designed and analyzed interventions designed to bridge group differences in divided societies in different parts of the world, and has worked on evaluating interventions in the U.S., Rwanda, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. She has served as an intern with the Psychological Study of Social Issues' United Nations NGO Committee (https://www.spssi.org/), which supports and trains psychologists in the dissemination of psychological research for policy related to the UN agenda.