CPS Professor Receives APA’s Highest Award

NSU’s College of Psychological Studies (CPS) professor Lenore Walker, Ed.D., ABPP, was recently honored by the American Psychological Association (APA), at their 117th annual convention with an award for Distinguished Lifetime Contributions to Media Psychology.

This is the highest award given by the APA Media Psychology Division to recognize an individual for a sustained body of work in developing, refining, and/or implementing applications, procedures, and methods that have had a major impact on the public and the profession of media psychology. Walker also serves as the APA Council Representative for the Division of Media Psychology.

In addition to being honored, Walker was a participant at the symposium, Sex, Love, and Psychology- A Town Hall Meeting. She also participated in a workshop entitled, Trauma Treatment in Independent Practice-Principles and Resources.

Walker and CPS doctoral students Ruhama Hendel, MS, and Yenis Castillo, MS, exhibited a poster presentation within the poster session: Violence Against Women, Body Image, and Women’s Health Issues. Their poster, Cases of Domestic Violence in Israeli Women highlighted the plight of Israeli women who suffer abuse under the tyranny of highly patriarchal societies in that region of the world.

Walker is the coordinator of the Clinical Forensic Psychology Concentration and a member of the faculty of the Institute for Trauma and Victimization at CPS. Walker is also the Executive Director of the Domestic Violence Institute www.dviworld.org, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the education and training, research and public policy issues around domestic violence with affiliate centers around the world.

She has written 13 books in the area including the now classic, “The Battered Woman,” which has published extensively in journals and book chapters and presented her work at scientific meetings around the world.

Earlier this year, she published the third edition of her groundbreaking book, The Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS). This third edition presents updated data generated at NSU, using the newly modified Battered Women Syndrome Questionnaire (BWSQ), with revised research on topics including posttraumatic stress disorder, learned helplessness or learned optimism, the cycle theory of violence and much more.

Walker has been in the national and local media discussing issues around domestic violence, introduction of the Battered Woman Syndrome in self-defense cases where women killed their abusive partners, and drew attention for her work with the O.J. Simpson defense team. More recently, Walker provided expert commentary in People magazine and USA Today regarding the domestic assault involving entertainers Chris Brown and Rihanna.