Academic Bio
Melanie Elyse Brewster investigates experiences of marginality and stress in the United States and has published over 75 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and a book, Atheists in America on these topics. She previously served as an editor for the Journal of Counseling Psychology as well as Secularism and Nonreligion. Her research has been featured in media outlets such as CNN, NPR, Vice News, and the CBC. Notably, LGBTQ workplace research she conducted with colleagues was used in APA’s amicus brief for the 2020 SCOTUS case on Title VII discrimination protection.
She has received awards from the American Psychological Association (APA) such as: the Fritz & Linn Kuder Early Career Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Counseling Psychology, Early Career Award for Contributions to LGBT Counseling Psychology, Women of Color Psychologies Award, Barbara Kirk Award, Psychotherapy with Women Award, among many others. Brewster presents widely on topics related to nonbelief, queerness, and minority stress and was selected to be a Public Voices Fellow in 2017 by Columbia University.
Complementing her practice as an interdisciplinary artist, she has worked as a professor in the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology at Columbia University, Teachers College since 2011. She co-founded the Sexuality, Women, and Gender Project in 2012 with Drs. Aurélie Athan and Riddhi Sandil. This was a NY-State approved graduate-level advanced certificate program that offered cutting edge clinical and research training. The program was sundowned in 2026 to focus on other ventures.
Selected Publications
Full academic CV is available here + google scholar page here.
Available for purchase via Columbia University Press
This collection features more than two dozen narratives by atheists from different backgrounds across the United States. Ranging in age, race, sexual orientation, and religious upbringing, these individuals address deconversion, community building, parenting, and romantic relationships, providing a nuanced look at living without a god in a predominantly Christian nation.
These narratives illuminate the complexities and consequences for nonbelievers in the United States. Stepping away from religious belief can have serious social and existential ramifications, forcing atheists to discover new ways to live meaningfully without a religious community. Yet shedding the constraints of a formal belief system can also be a freeing experience. Ultimately, this volume shows that claiming an atheist identity is anything but an act isolated from the other dimensions of the self. Upending common social, political, and psychological assumptions about atheists, this collection helps carve out a more accepted space for this minority within American society.
Research Statement
Research is inherently collaborative and throughout the years I have had the opportunity to work with truly incredible student and faculty collaborators via my research team, identityLORE. Historically, most of our work centered on issues of marginalization, stigma, and discrimination (i.e., “minority stress”) and how these experiences impact mental health and well-being. Many of the publications from this program of research speak to unique issues related to queerness, secularism, and other ‘disruptive’ states of being. A common thread in this work is measurement development and evaluation—such efforts are an acknowledgement that most of our tools for testing and building theories in psychology have been woefully inadequate and laden with biases.
In more recent years, I have broadened my focus to queer futurity (Muñoz, 2009) and its possibilities for new ways of being in the world: relationally, politically, and temporally. My thinking is regularly informed by work on chrononormativity (Freeman, 2010), monster studies (Halberstam, 2020; Stryker, 2024), necropolitics (Mbembe, 2019), and contemporary existentialism (Hägglund, 2020).
I am not accepting new doctoral students for the 2027-2028 academic year.