2026 APA Division 5 Qualitative Awards!

Congratulations to this year's winners!

Distinguished Dissertation in Qualitative Inquiry Award: Joonwoo Lee

Mr. Lee’s dissertation, “‘Transness is Our Salve’: How Trans Identity Facilitates Healing from Relational Trauma with Parental Figures,” makes an important and sorely needed contribution to psychology by revealing how transgender and nonbinary individuals heal from relational trauma with parental figures. Rather than conceptualizing trans identity as a site of conflict, Mr. Lee’s dissertation demonstrates that the process of recognizing and actualizing one’s gender identity can itself be a powerful mechanism for intrapersonal and relational healing. By identifying “Transness as Salve” as the core theoretical category, the study advances our understanding of the human experience of trauma, resilience, identity development, and community-based healing, offering a paradigm-shifting reframe that has implications for clinical practice, family-based intervention, and trauma theory.

Distinguished Early Career Contributions in Qualitative Inquiry Award: Zenobia Morrill

Dr. Morrill has published over 30 peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters, all of which either present qualitative findings, advocate for qualitative methodological integrity, and/or translate qualitative research into critical and liberation psychology practices. The impact of her work is already evident in citation metrics (with 500+ citations and an h-index of 13) and in the prominence of outlets (e.g., American Psychologist, Qualitative Psychology, Journal of Counseling Psychology). Dr. Morrill has made unusually broad and concrete contributions. She has developed a Liberation Psychotherapy model grounded in qualitative work, coauthored methodological standards and guidelines that advance integrity, intersubjectivity, and ethics in qualitative research, co-edited multiple special issues, and produced infrastructure that strengthens qualitative training and evaluation (including revising institutional dissertation guidance to reflect qualitative research standards). Her recognition includes the Sigmund Koc Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology.

Distinguished Contributions to Teaching and Mentoring in Qualitative Inquiry: Lisa Osbeck

Dr. Osbeck’s mentoring outcomes are field-facing and unusually concrete. The fruits of her pedagogical contributions can be seen early in her career (e.g., the co-authored 2011 volume, Science as Psychology: Sense Making and Identity in Science Practice) and are especially evident in the co-edited Routledge volume, Person-Centered Studies in the Psychology of Science: Examining the Active Person (2023)—a book she co-edited alongside one of her students. Each of the eight chapters is authored by one of her doctoral students, and each chapter began as a course-based person-centered investigation that Dr. Osbeck mentored to publication quality.

Dr. Osbeck’s teaching of qualitative inquiry extends well beyond the classroom through her editorial leadership. She has served as a Consulting Editor of Qualitative Psychology since the journal’s founding, mentoring numerous authors in developing submissions for publication at a time when opportunities for formal qualitative training remain limited. Her reviews are described as both incisive and deeply supportive—identifying exactly where qualitative work needs strengthening while encouraging authors to reach the highest scholarly standards. Her ongoing leadership in a Division 5 handbook initiative, co-editing the qualitative methods section, further reflects her commitment to strengthening qualitative training across diverse approaches.

Distinguished Contributions in Qualitative Inquiry Award: Deb Tolman

Dr. Tolman is an extraordinary, original, pathbreaking scholar and champion of qualitative psychology. Over decades of work, she has been a trailblazer in the quest to legitimize qualitative inquiry in psychology, while also producing canonical scholarship that shows—again and again—what qualitative methods render possible when we center voice, agency, and lived experience.

As a feminist scholar, Dr. Tolman has consistently championed the intersection of feminisms and other critical theories with qualitative methods—doubling her contributions to psychological inquiry. Her mission has been to disrupt the hegemony of quantitative methodologies and to demonstrate the power of qualitative research to produce what one letter called “transformative” and “interruptive” knowledge—work that centers voice and agency, and that produces unique and vital knowledge about human experience under conditions of oppression, demonization, and dehumanization. Her impact is clear, with over 13,700 citations (Google Scholar), 92 publications, 54 peer-reviewed articles (51 of which are in high-impact outlets), and 30 grants (26 external/4 internal) from sources including NIH/NICHD, the NIH Office of Population Research, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, totaling over $5.7 million to date.

Dr. Tolman’s contributions are extensive and profound. She has transformed the discipline through early efforts to legitimize qualitative inquiry, refined and codified methodological practice, and produced paradigm-shifting qualitative scholarship. She has also led SQIP through a critical period of organizational and strategy development that continues to guide the Society’s work.