Biography:

Matthew Zawadzki is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of California, Merced. His work focuses on the relationships between stress and health, particularly examining how our thoughts like rumination and worry can create and worsen the stress we are experiencing. He is increasingly focused on how an understanding of stress much be situated within the culture and context in which it is experienced, and in turn, that interventions aimed to reduce stress and its negative consequences must be culturally and situationally grounded. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology and Women’s Studies from The Pennsylvania State University in 2012, and completed a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Biobehavioral Health at The Pennsylvania State University. During his time working with Dr. Stephanie Shields (graduate school advisor), Matthew served on the WAGES project as lead Research Assistant helping to develop and test WAGES-Academic.