Associate Professor
Shannon Sauer-Zavala is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Kentucky (UK) and is the founding Director of Clinical Services at the UK Clinic for Emotional Health. Dr. Sauer-Zavala received her doctorate in Clinical Psychology from UK in 2011. She spent seven years on the faculty in Boston University’s Department of Psychological and Brain Science before returning to UK in 2019.
Her research is focused on exploring emotion-focused mechanisms that maintain psychological symptoms and using this information to develop more targeted, easily-disseminated intervention strategies. In particular, she is a co-author on the leading transdiagnostic treatment for emotional disorders, the Unified Protocol, as well as a new treatment for borderline personality disorder (BPD Compass). Her research has been supported by NIMH, NIAAA, Templeton Foundation, the Center for Implementation and Improvement Sciences, and the Canadian Institute of Health Research. Dr. Sauer-Zavala has co-authored over 110 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and books.