Area of Specialization: Adult Clinical Psychology

Research Advisor: Julie Exline

Research Interests: My primary research interest is in mental health associations with high-cost religious disaffiliation. I am most interested in observing the healing process after losing one’s community, way of life, and religion. Specifically, I am interested in understanding which factors impact healthy adaptation to one’s new life after religious disaffiliation, with the intention of optimizing this process in therapy.

Selected Publications & Presentations: 

Keller, Y., Chavarga, A., Hirsch, E., Eisen, P., & Miles, R. (2023) Gender Differences in Motivations of Disaffiliation from Orthodox Judaism. (Under Revision).

Miles, R., Chavarga, A., Eisen, P., Hirsch, E., & Keller, Y. (2023). Religious Disaffiliation from Orthodox Judaism: Social, Psychological, and Intellectual Factors Related to Exiting. (Under Review).

Miles, R., Chavarga, A., Eisen, P., Hirsch, E., & Keller, Y. (2022, December). How it began: Initial triggers for disaffiliation from Orthodox Judaism. (Under Revision).

Pait, K.C., Exline, J.J., Keller, Y., Moffitt, A., Goldman, D., & Wilt., J.A. (2023, May). What Types of Messages do People Perceive from the Departed? A Qualitative Study on the Nature of After-Death Communication. To be presented at the 2023 Science of Consciousness Conference, Taormina, Italy.

Miles, R., Chavarga, A., Eisen, P., Hirsch, E., & Keller, Y. (2022, December). How it began: Initial triggers for disaffiliation from Orthodox Judaism. Presented at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Association for Jewish Studies, Boston, MA.

Keller, Y., Chavarga, A., Hirsch, E., Eisen, P., & Miles, R. (2022, May) Gender Differences in Motivations of Disaffiliation from Orthodox Judaism. Poster presented at the 31^st Annual Brooklyn College Science Research Day, virtual.

Keller, Y., Miles, R., Eisen, P., Hirsch, E., & Chavarga, A. (2022, April). Religious Disaffiliation from Orthodox Judaism: Social, Psychological, and Intellectual Factors Related to Exiting. Poster presented at the 2022 Rocky Mountain Psychological Association Annual Convention, Salt Lake City, UT.

Gross, G., & Keller, Y. (2022). Diagramming Modesty: on the Use of Tznius Diagrams. In D. Bernstein, Artifacts of Orthodox Childhoods. Ben Yehuda Press. https://www.benyehudapress.com/books/artifacts-of-orthodox-childhoods/

Miles, R., Chavarga, A., Chabot, S., Eisen, P., Hirsch, E., & Keller, Y. (2021, November). Factors Associated with Religious Disaffiliation from Orthodox Judaism: Comparisons between an Empirical Study and Community Perspectives. Poster presented at the New England Psychological Association Annual Meeting, virtual conference. https://nepsych.org/poster

Robles, S., & Keller, Y. (2021, June). College counseling in the new millennium: the role of data driven cultural competence. Paper presented at the Counseling Centers of New York 39^th Annual Conference, virtual conference.