Victoria Monte, MA

PhD student
NYU
Brookltn, New York

Victoria Monte is a second-year PhD candidate under the mentorship of Dr. William Tsai. Her desire to enroll as a doctoral student at NYU developed naturally as a result of a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, her role as a researcher at several academic institutions, and her experience as a caretaker for adults and children with serious disabilities. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Binghamton University. She later received her master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University’s Teachers College, where she concentrated in Global Mental Health and Research Methods, and conducted a study on the perception of emotion in China and the United States. As a result of these endeavors, she has developed a passion to help individuals across cultures who suffer from health conditions through psychological research. Her research interests include writing interventions that assess preferences of support giving across cultures as well as the perception of health according to one’s cultural orientation, and how these perceptions create, bolster, or minimize obstacles to treatment. Additionally, she is interested in the cultural and psychological factors that maximize resilience in response to disability and chronic illness, and the implications for treatment protocols based on these diagnostic criteria. She is hopeful that her current research at NYU will help develop novel treatments and interventions that increase resilience, health, and wellness in those facing disability and illness across cultures.