United States

Professor, MiStory Founder and Current Director
Dr. Saint Arnault’s research centers on gender, cultural and social influences on mental health, trauma recovery, and help seeking. She develops and tests her Cultural Determinants of Help Seeking theory in research with women in over a dozen countires. She uses mixed methods to discover how distress experiences, culturally based meanings (such as stigma and sense of coherence), social support, and social negativity impact the help seeking journey. Her Clinical Ethnographic Narrative Interview (CENI) provides a transcultural method that allows people to explore the cultural and social influences in their search for health, and also promotes self-awareness and active engagement in the  help-seeking process. She also examines cultural factors that influence meaning, expectation, and expression of depression. She is a core faculty in the Michigan Mixed Method Research and Scholarship Program.

Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Laura Sinko is a mental health nurse and sexual assault nurse examiner by clinical training. She received her PhD from the University of Michigan and is currently a National Clinician Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Sinko’s research interests surround healing and recovery after gender-based violence and understanding socio-cultural influences of that process. Her specific area of focus is sexual violence. She has a passion for visual research methodologies and creative dissemination strategies to bridge the gap between science, practice, and the community.

Medical Student
Ms. Burns is a medical student at the University of Michigan, and is pursuing a career in academic medicine that incorporates principles of social justice and feminism into clinical care. She is interested in using research to provide voices to survivors of violence and improve the efficacy of their medical care.