Rowan Hunt
Rowan is a third-year doctoral student in the clinical psychology program at the University of Louisville. There, she is mentored by Dr. Cheri Levinson and is a member of the Eating Anxiety Treatment Lab (EAT Lab). Prior to coming to Louisville, Rowan graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a dual Bachelor of Arts in psychology and economics. During undergrad, she worked as a therapeutic assistant at Veritas Collaborative, an inpatient/residential hospital and partial hospitalization program (PHP) for children and adolescents with eating disorders. After graduating from college, she continued working as a research coordinator on at UNC. She later moved to Philadelphia and worked at Drexel University as a research coordinator on two clinical trials examining novel treatments for eating disorders. In addition to her work at CEH, Rowan also sees clients on the Eating Disorder Specialty Team at the Noble H. Kelly Psychological Services Center at the University of Louisville.
Rowan's is broadly interested in why some individuals do things that hurt themselves when they feel strong (positive and negative) emotions. Specifically, she is interested in better understanding the cognitive-affective mechanisms (e.g., emotion-driven decision making, emotion regulation) underlying eating disorders and other self-injurious and risky behaviors. Ultimately, she hopes to use our understanding of such mechanisms to tailor existing treatments to better treat eating disorders and common comorbidities, as well as to reduce the re-emergence of psychopathology (i.e., relapse).