director AND PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Dr. Ken Allen (C.V.) is presently a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Oberlin College, where he also completed his bachelor's degree. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Harvard University, and completed his predoctoral residency at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. He remained at Brown as a postdoctoral fellow prior to returning to his alma mater.

Professor Allen's research examines biological, cognitive, and social factors that influence the development, maintenance, and treatment of health behaviors relevant to psychopathology. His work primarily focuses on two broad categories: (1) direct self-harm, e.g., suicide and nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI); and (2) indirect self-harm, e.g., dysregulated eating, excessive exercise, substance misuse, as well as other impulsive or compulsive behaviors. He is also interested in theoretical issues in clinical and cognitive psychological sciences, e.g., etiologically-informed nosologies of dysfunctional behaviors and computational process-based ontologies of neurocognition.