Current Lab Members

Principal Investigator

Anna Bardone-Cone, PhD, FAED

Anna Bardone-Cone (she/her/hers) went from a math and French double major at Williams College to teaching middle school and high school to graduate school in clinical psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to internship at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, PA. Although her path to psychology was not direct, the field of psychology and being a professor have been a great  professional home for her in terms of letting her wear the many hats she likes: research, mentoring, teaching, seeing clients (although not for a while now). Her first faculty position was at the University of Missouri- Columbia with a move to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009 for unique opportunities and to be closer to family. Anna’s research is on psychosocial factors related to eating disorders and has focused on perfectionism, self-concept constructs, social media, peers, and family. She also has interests in defining recovery from eating disorders in a comprehensive way (in particular, assessing for cognitive recovery, not just physical and behavioral recovery) and in the value of having a consensus way of assessing recovery for the purposes of treatment outcome research, and interests in examining disordered eating and body image in racial and ethnic minority groups, considering theories and relationships that have been tested in predominantly White samples as well as theories and relationships that may be unique to racial/ethnic minorities. Anna teaches undergraduate courses in psychopathology, eating disorders and body image, and gender, and a graduate class on multiculturalism in clinical psychology. She is currently a Thorp Faculty Engaged Scholar and excited for the opportunity to develop partnerships with communities to engage in research that will benefit them. She has a sustained involvement in diversity-related initiatives with past roles as faculty advisor for the clinical program’s Diversity Training Committee (including inaugurating the Diversifying Clinical Psychology Weekend), co-director of the department’s diversity initiatives, a Working on Women scholar, and co-chair of the departmental Climate and Inclusion committee.

Graduate Students

Alexandra (Ale) Miller, MA

Ale (she/her/hers) recently completed her pre-doctoral psychology internship at the UCSD Eating Disorders Center through the UCSD/VA Psychology Internship Training Program. She is a doctoral candidate in her final year of UNC’s clinical psychology program. She was born and raised in Miami, Florida. She attended New York University for her undergraduate degree, where she received her Bachelor of Science in Applied Psychology and a minor in Spanish. Ale’s research interests include appearance-related communication, social media use, self-concept and identity, body image and disordered eating, particularly among female athletes. Her master’s thesis focused on the appearance-related communication style of fat talk among young and middle-aged women, and she is currently working on her dissertation, “General and Sport-Specific Risk Factors of Disordered Eating and Negative Affect among Female Aesthetic Athletes.”

Emily Walsh, MA

Emily (she/her) is a sixth-year graduate student in the UNC clinical psychology program, currently on her predoctoral internship at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. She was born and raised in Massachusetts and earned her BA in psychology and studio art from Bard College in 2013. Upon graduating college, she worked for three years as a research assistant on studies for the Rhode Island Hospital Methods to Improve Diagnostic Assessment and Services (MIDAS) Project and conducted comprehensive diagnostic evaluations at the hospital’s adult partial hospital program. She then worked for two years at the Columbia Center for Eating Disorders. Emily’s research explores the complex relationships between sex/sexuality and body image, with emphasis on how these relationships are situated within and influenced by intersecting systems of power and oppression. Her comprehensive exam was a review of the relationships between body dissatisfaction and sexual experiences within an intersectional feminist framework. As an extension of this project, her dissertation aims to investigate the relationships between body dissatisfaction and sexual experiences in adults across gender, race, and sexual orientation spectra using a mixed-methods (quantitative and qualitative) and critical theory-driven methodology. Emily has completed coursework through UNC’s Graduate Certificate in Participatory Research and additional training in qualitative research through Research Talk and the Odum Institute. Her clinical interests include individual, couples, and group psychotherapy, adolescent and young adult mental health, and working with historically underserved populations in community mental health settings.

Lauren Wash, MA

Lauren Wash (she/her/hers) is a second-year doctoral student in the UNC Clinical Psychology program. She was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Lauren earned a B.S. in Psychology and Gender & Women’s Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and received an M.A. in Counseling for Mental Health & Wellness from New York University. Lauren also earned a post-graduate certificate in the integrated treatment of eating disorders from the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy’s Center for the Study of Anorexia and Bulimia (CSAB) in New York City. Prior to joining the ABC lab, Lauren worked in full-time clinical research at VA New York Harbor Healthcare System – Manhattan Campus (VANYHHS) as a research coordinator for the Psychotherapy Research & Development Program. This team developed interventions for Veterans who are non-responders to gold-standard treatments for depression, anxiety, and PTSD. In addition to full-time research, Lauren also worked part-time as a licensed mental health counselor specializing in eating disorders, and delivered group, individual, and meal support therapy to patients using a variety of approaches including psychodynamic, CBT, and DBT. Lauren hopes to develop a program of research that examines Black women’s and girls’ experiences with eating disorders, negative body image, colorism, and hair politics.

Research Assistants