BBI Staff
Meera Adya, J.D., Ph.D.,
Director of Research
Meera Adya, J.D., Ph.D., is the BBI Director of Research and Affiliated Faculty in Psychology at Syracuse University and the Consortium for Culture and Medicine involving SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse University, and Le Moyne College. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on identifying and remediating social problems through empirical exploration of the factors that affect decision-making and testing of efficacious remedies that fit within an existing legal framework. Dr. Adya earned her law degree and doctorate in social psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which is among the foremost interdisciplinary programs in psychology and law. Using the literature of disability discrimination in employment, her research laid the foundation for a new direction in employment and disability discrimination research; findings demonstrate the potential for discrimination based on perceived disability due to a positive family history or a positive genetic test for a disorder. Other recent work at the intersection of law and psychology involved examining U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence related to 4th Amendment search and seizure caselaw and conceptions of privacy. While jurisprudence seems to consider privacy a unidimensional construct, our empirical research using multidimensional scaling techniques suggests privacy is more complex than that.
As Director of Research at BBI, Dr. Adya directs the research agenda and oversees all BBI research activities across all offices. Dr. Adya has extensive experience with funded research and has developed and implemented multiple research projects and grant applications. Key projects include: (1) the Disability Case Study Research Consortium on Employer Best Practices in Employing Persons with Disabilities, a project which has established a paradigm for conducting case studies of the employment of persons with disability and which involved conducting several case studies (Project Director); (2) a field-based experimental study investigating implicit attitudes evident in employer hiring decisions for the NIDRR-funded Demand-Side Employment Placement Models project (Principal Investigator); (3) a project examining workplace accommodations’ effectiveness and cost-benefit over the long-term, a sub-contract of the Workplace Accommodations RERC (Co-Principal Investigator); (4) a project examining workplace policies and practices that support the reintegration and retention of Veterans, National Guard and Reserve members; and (5) a project examining service delivery models of assistive technology to facilitate improved employment outcomes for persons with disabilities.
Curriculum Vita - M. Adya (Word file)
Selected Publications
- Corporate Culture and Employment of People With Disabilities: Role of Social Workers and Service Provider Organizations
by D. Samant, M. Soffer, B. Hernandez, M. Adya, O. Akinpelu, P. Blanck, et. al
Journal of Social Work in Disability & Rehabilitation (Vol. 8, No. 3 & 4, July 2009) - Judges' Nonverbal Behavior [PDF file] (2008)
Meera Adya and Peter Blanck
Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law, ed. Brian L. Cutler, Sage, 388-90. - Defying Double Discrimination [PDF file] (2007)
MReina, M.V., Adya, M. & Blanck, P.
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 8, 95-104
** Pre-publication draft **
Word version
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