HOPE Lab

Buy the Award-Winning Book Here (over 800 copies sold, as of January 2025)!!!!!!!!

Read the Introduction Chapter: What’s Racism Got To Do With It? Black Women & Girls, Sexual Abuse, & Liberation

I am NOT recruiting PhD students in BUSSW for Fall 2026. There are no additional openings in the HOPE Lab.

My lecture at McLean Hospital Grand Rounds, Cultural Betrayal, Sexual Abuse, and Black Women: The Role of Institutional Courage in Mental Health and Wellness, October 2022.

HOPE Lab Description

PI: Dr. Jennifer M. Gómez

I named my research laboratory The HOPE Lab to highlight that our work is not unilaterally depressing, but instead provides a needed mirror of pain, strength, and healing to some of our country’s most silenced.

As the creator of Cultural Betrayal Trauma Theory (CBTT), we use this framework for researching the impact of violence in the context of inequality primarily in youth, young adults, middle aged adults, and elders in order to identify avenues of hope & healing for individuals, families, communities, and society. See CV for more information about CBTT and other research.

See my Current Students and About sections for more information. Additional resources include the Gómez HOPE Lab Professional Development Series and the Gómez Social Justice & Institutional Change Collection.

Ph.D. Student Funding: Boston University (BU) provides funding for PhD students, per the three-year Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the BU Graduate Student Workers Union (BUGWU, SEIU Local 509) and BU, ratified October 2024. PhD students should not expect any additional funding from the PI (Gómez) or the HOPE Lab. It is students’ responsibility to be knowledgeable on the CBA.

Book Project

During my time as a CASBS Fellow at Stanford University (2021-22), I wrote my first academic book: The Cultural Betrayal of Black Women & Girls: A Black Feminist Approach to Healing from Sexual Abuse (Publisher: American Psychological Association, 2023; winner of the 2024 Frank W. Putnam Outstanding Book Award from the ISSTD).

The Cultural Betrayal of Black Women & Girls is the first book to use the CBTT research to contribute to academic and national discussions regarding anti-Black racism and sexual violence. Specifically, I synthesize the quantitative and qualitative CBTT research that encompasses five data sets of diverse Black young women who have experienced cultural betrayal sexual trauma in their lives. In doing so, I directly address the specific bind placed on Black women and girls to protect the Black community while Black men sexually violate them. Through utilizing critical race theory (e.g., Bell, 1995) and structural intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) to theoretically integrate anti-Black racism and sexual violence together as two branches of intertwined contemporary social issues, I also identify concrete ways forward, with a focus on healing and social justice on individual, familial, community, cultural, institutional, and societal levels.

With CBTT (Gómez, 2020b) as the foundation, this book incorporates four transdisciplinary literatures— Black feminist intersectionality work (e.g., Combahee River Collective, 1977; Collins, 1999; Crenshaw, 1991), sexual violence against Black women and girls (e.g., Bent-Goodley, 2009), cultural competency in clinical and extra-therapeutic intervention (e.g., French et al., 2020; Miller & Stiver, 1997), and institutional change (e.g., Freyd, 2014; Freyd & Smidt, 2019). Though seemingly ambitious, this roster is the logical next step in person-centering Black women and girls, thus providing a single resource for understanding and addressing sexual violence on individual, institutional, and societal levels.

Filmed January 2022, I discuss the content of the book and my writing process in Cultural Betrayal & ‘Conundrums’: The Making of a Book, at the BUSSW Equity & Inclusion Speaker Series.

Funding: 2021-22 CASBS Fellowship, Stanford University

Author: Dr. Jennifer M. Gómez

ENRICH Study: Experimental Study of Violence & Race in High School

Young Adults, 18 – 30 years old

  • Full Sample, N = 2,874
    • Black Young Adults Subsample: N = 1,339
    • White Young Adults Subsample: N = 1,535
  • Experimental Vignette Design
  • Correlational Design
  • Select Constructs: Teacher/Student, Black/White High School Sexual Violence Vignette, Perpetrator/Victim Responsibility, Perceived Title IX Applicability, Cultural Betrayal Trauma, (Intra)Cultural Pressure, Violence History, Mental Health

Funding: Wayne State University Research Grant & Jennifer M. Gómez Start-Up Funds (Division of Research; Dept. of Psychology; MPSI)

Articles:

PI: Dr. Jennifer M. Gómez

Experimental Vignette Design: Breanne Helmers & Dr. Jennifer M. Gómez

Cultural Betrayal Multidimensional Inventory for Black American Young Adults (CBMI-BAYA)

Participants: University Students–historical White university, historically Black university (N = 342); Community (N = 619)

Questionnaires

  • (intra)cultural trust
  • (intra)cultural support
  • (intra)cultural pressure
  • cultural betrayal
  • violence & racial discrimination
  • posttraumatic growth

Funding: Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (PI: Jennifer M. Gómez; 2018-19); National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant DRL- 1621416 (PI: Oliver Hill); Wayne State University Jennifer M. Gómez Start-Up Funds (Division of Research; Dept. of Psychology; MPSI)

Articles

  • Gómez, J. M., & Johnson, L. U. (2024). Assessing ‘friendly fire’: The development and validation of the Cultural Betrayal Multidimensional Inventory for Black American Young Adults (CBMI-BAYA). Preprint (manuscript under review). https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/vea7p
  • Gómez, J. M. (2022). Campus sexual harassment, other violence, and racism, oh my! Evidence from Black women undergraduates for a culturally competent university approach to Title IX. Feminist Criminology, 17(3), 368-383. https://doi.org/10.1177/15570851211062574

PI: Dr. Jennifer M. Gómez

Collaborators: Dr. Jennifer M. Gómez & Dr. Lars Johnson

SUID HEAL Study: Study on Suicidality, Disclosure, & Healing 

  • Participants: N = 600 Black Young Adults; Desi Young Adults
  • Correlational Design
  • Select Constructs: Violence History, Suicidality [ideation, attempts], Disclosure of Violence History & Suicidality, Mental Health [dissociation, depression, anxiety], Hope, Posttraumatic Growth, Qualitative: What is CBTT?

Funding: Wayne State University Jennifer M. Gómez Start-Up Funds (Division of Research; Dept. of Psychology; MPSI)

Articles

  • Gómez, J. M., & Gobin, R. L. (2024). “It will always feel worse because it comes with that added ‘betrayal’”: Intersectionality praxis and Black young women survivors’ perspectives on cultural betrayal trauma theory. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 25(5), 656-673. https://doi.org/10.1080/15299732.2024.2383197 Preprint. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/hfe6z
    • *Honorable Mention for the Richard Kluft Award for Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 2024 Best Article  

PI: Dr. Jennifer M. Gómez  

CARA Study: Cardiovascular Disease & Cultural Betrayal Trauma in Black Middle Age & Older Adults Study

  • Participants: N = 400 Black Adults 40 years+ old
  • Correlational Design
  • Select Constructs: Violence History, Racial discrimination, Non-Suicidality Self Injury, Mental Health, Self-Reported Physical Health, Cardiovascular Disease Indicators 

Funding: Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research (MCUAAAR); Wayne State University Jennifer M. Gómez/Samuele Zilioli Start-Up Funds (Division of Research; Dept. of Psychology; MPSI; IOG)

Research Design

Co-PIs: Dr. Jennifer M. Gómez & Dr. Samuele Zilioli

Betrayal & Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church

Funding:

2021-22- International Society for the Study of Trauma & Dissociation (ISSTD) 2021 David Caul Research Grant; Initial Validation of the Religious Betrayal Multidimensional Inventory: Dissociation & Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church

2022- Center for Institutional Courage; Initial Validation of the Religious Betrayal Multidimensional Inventory: Dissociation & Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church

Research Design

Student PI: Logan Zelenak

Faculty Advisor/Collaborator/PI: Dr. Jennifer M. Gómez

Research Opportunities

I am NOT recruiting PhD students in BUSSW for Fall 2026. There are no additional openings in the HOPE Lab.

See the Authorship subsection of the HOPE Lab Dynamics section of the Current Students section of my website.

Postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, post-bacs, and undergraduates can be involved in research through earning the opportunity to:

  • collaborate on current projects
  • add measures to data collections
  • co-author paper and poster conference presentations
  • lead projects that incorporate constructs of interest with a focus on betrayal and CBTT in marginalized youth, young adults, and elder populations
  • co-author manuscripts for publication in peer-reviewed journals (articles), books (chapters), and the general public (op-eds)

See Current Students section for more information.