Elissa Rodkey, PhD

Associate Professor of Psychology
My aim is transformation. I want students to be changed by my courses: the way they think, the way they look at the world, the way they live. I see my role as that of guide, helping students learn to leave the comfort of their familiar vistas and fearlessly explore God’s good world.

Elissa Rodkey is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology. Dr. Rodkey received her PhD from York University's Historical, Theoretical, and Critical Studies of Psychology program and approaches psychology from the perspective of the discipline’s history. Her specific research interests are: the history of psychology and religion, the history of developmental psychology, women/gender in the history of psychology, and the role of the personal in scientists’ work. Several of these themes can be seen in Dr. Rodkey’s forthcoming book, Neither Rat Nor Robot, a biography of Magda Arnold, a 20th century psychologist whose mid-life conversion to Catholicism profoundly shaped her career and pioneering emotion research.

  • PhD (York University; 2015)
  • MA (York University; 2010)
  • BA (Gordon College; 2004)

Awards & Honours

  • Elected American Psychological Association Division 26's President
  • International Society for the History of Behavioral and Social Sciences Young Scholar Award
  • American Psychological Association Division 26's Early Career Award

Recent Publications

Selected Publications

  • Rodkey, E. N., Buttrey, M., & Rodkey, K. L. Beyond following rules: Teaching research ethics in the age of the Hoffman Report. History of the Human Sciences, 36(6), 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1177/09526951221124781. (2022)
  • Rodkey, E. N., & Rodkey, K. L. Of power and problems: Gender in psychology’s past. In D. McCallum (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human Sciences (pp. 1035-1064). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7255-2_79. (2021)
  • Rodkey, K. L., & Rodkey, E. N. Family, friends, and faith-communities: Intellectual community and the benefits of unofficial networks for marginalized scientists. History of Psychology, 23(4), 289-311. https://doi.org/10.1037/hop0000172. (2020)
  • Rodkey, E. N. “Very much in love”: The letters of Magda Arnold and Father John Gasson. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 53(3), 286-304. https://doi.org/10.1002/jhbs.21864. (2017)
  • Rodkey, E. N. Far more than dutiful daughter: Milicent Washburn Shinn’s child study and education advocacy after 1898. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 177(6), 209-230. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221325.2016.1237235. (2016)
  • Rodkey, E. N., & Pillai Riddell, R. The infancy of infant pain research: The experimental origins of infant pain denial. Journal of Pain, 14(4), 338-350. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2012.12.017. (2013)

  • PSYC 201 Research Methods I
  • PSYC 408 History and Systems
  • PSYC 418 Memory and Attachment