Meet Division 51 Member: Saed Hill, Ph.D.

ECP Member-at-Large Saed Hill, Ph.D., shares his perspectives.

When did you join Division 51? What made you interested in joining? 

I joined the Division in 2019 when I was finishing my Counseling Ph.D. program. I had just moved to Chicago the year before and took a job at Northwestern University doing violence prevention and health masculinity work in their violence prevention department. APA was in Chicago in 2019 and I attended a program on Compassion and Positive Masculinity featuring Dr. Daniel Ellenberg. I was struck by how connected and vulnerable Dr. Ellenberg was as he described his work with men/boys. It inspired me to want to get to know him and learn more about his compassion work with men. After the program I introduced myself to him and he invited me to the Division 51 student and ECP social hour. There we connected, he agreed to help mentor me in my early career, and he’s been my mentor ever since. I also met several other folks in the division at that social hour that made me feel so welcomed. I knew I had found a home at that time!

What do you find most valuable about being a member of the division? 

Probably two things. One is the access to the latest research from some of the most accomplished and brilliant minds in the field of masculinities. Access to these researchers, educators, clinicians, etc. has helped ground my approaches to the work and has made building resources for people I am supporting in their masculine-identity development that much easier and streamlined. Secondly, it is the relationships that I have built with other members of the division. Being a part of this division has felt like another family for me and so these close relationships have been invaluable.

What are your clinical, teaching, research, or other applied interests relating to the psychology of men and masculinity?    

Previous research interests have included examining the bystander intervention behaviors and attitudes of college men as well as how restrictive masculinities impact things such as psychosocial well-being, romantic relationship satisfaction, sexuality and kink, and perpetration of violence. In my current work I supervise an all men/masculine-identifying peer education student group and train them to do violence prevention programming and retreats across campus and in the Chicago community. I also teach a psychoeducational course at Northwestern on deconstructing masculinity as a means of violence prevention as well as do consulting work with various institutions across the country to help them create curricula, social norms campaigns, and other programming to promote healthy masculinity at their organization. I just want all of us to feel free and liberated from the pressures of rigid gender norms. I love the possibilities of what this division can accomplish and look forward to helping this division promote more discourse on masculinity at the national and global levels.