J. Maya Hernandez

Postdoctoral Research Scientist

• Ph.D., University of California, Irvine

Maya Hernandez, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist in the Youth, Media & Wellbeing Research Lab at the Wellesley Centers for Women. Her multi-method research interests focus on the psychosocial risks and benefits of historically underrepresented adolescents’ social technology use and leveraging the social ecological framework to adolescence in the digital age. She also has extensive experience working in nonprofit management for community youth programs around civic engagement and storytelling.

Prior to joining WCW’s Youth, Media & Wellbeing Research Lab, she received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Social Ecology from University of California, Irvine and B.A. in Psychology from Johns Hopkins University. She has over a decade of clinical and pediatrics research experience from Boston Children’s Hospital and Stanford University School of Medicine.