About Me

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Mimi Arbeit

Academic, Activist, Antifascist

I am a White anti-racist Jewish queer femme applied developmental psychologist, sexuality educator, and community organizer. I lived in Boston and New York City before moving to Charlottesville in 2016, as a postdoctoral fellow at the UVA School of Education. I organized with SURJ-Charlottesville and supported media strategy within a network of local anti-racist activists during and after the 2017 Summer of Hate. I now share my life between Charlottesville and Boston, where I have a faculty position in Psychology at Suffolk University and lead the Youth Equity & Sexuality Lab.

I study adolescent sexuality development with a focus on sex education, sexual violence prevention, and fighting fascism. My primary research lens entails the examination of contextual influences on young people’s development of dynamic skills. I pursue these academic goals through also investing in mutually supportive bidirectional relationships with youth and activists who are directly confronting systems of oppression and building power from the margins towards a world where all will thrive. My recent work integrates antifascist practices with applied developmental science to identify strategies for confronting far-right and fascist influences in young people’s lives.

I love dancing, and I love taking really long walks, whether on the beach or downtown. Most of all, I love talking to people about relationships, community organizing, and antifascism.

view my full Curriculum Vita