About
Kristen Leer received her B.A. in Psychology, Classic Civilization, and Religious Studies, a McNair and SURF scholar, from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. During her undergraduate studies, she worked in the ABCD Study investigating psychological impacts on youth populations, specifically regarding substance abuse, and was trained in neuro-clinical psychology. Nevertheless, after completing her Honors College senior thesis on "The Evolution of Schizophrenia throughout the DSM Editions and Cinematic Representations," and being involved in trauma-informed care during the COVID-19 pandemic through City Year AmeriCorps, Leer's academic and public service endeavors solidified her research interest in investigating the intersectional relationship between trauma, media, and culture.
Leer was awarded the NSF-GRFP for her work on trauma(tic) media and the psychophysiological impact it has on marginalized racial/ethnic populations. Her research in this area has also been awarded several grants from the Anti-Racism Research Grants for Graduate Students to the DEI Comm and Media Graduate Student Research Grant. Other areas of media psychology that Leer's work focuses on are mental health representation/stereotypes, trauma podcast narratives, and digital discourse around mental health topics. Leer has been presented with the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program's (UROP) 2025 Outstanding Research Mentor Award, and all of her UROP students were awarded Blue Ribbon Certificates for their media psychology research poster presentations.
Recently, Leer created a research art exhibit titled "Digital Activism in Bloom," which was supported by the Arts Initiative Graduate Student Arts Research Grant (GSARG). This exhibit transformed 38 interviews with social media activists about their digital labor, activism, and exposure to violent, harmful, traumatic media into creative pieces (hand-drawn watercolor phone cases). Each phone case represents a social media activist and has been embedded in ArcGIS, where their interviews can be engaged with in a unique, digital, creative way.
Leer's work also extends into the humanities, specifically investigating the horror cinematic genre through its representation of trauma/mental health, positioning of marginalized racial identities, and horror fandom practices such as podcasting. This has allowed Leer to contribute to several public-facing and academic writing projects, such as contributing a book chapter to The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film! Recently, Leer and Mel Monier co-authored a paper titled, "'Since the moment pictures could move, we had skin in the game': Black horror podcasters as fans, critics, and creators," which has been selected as the winner of the 2025 Fans of Color Research Prize. All of Leer's research and writing aims to prioritize marginalized populations whose narratives, experiences, and identities need to be heard.
