Peri Yuksel
Associate Professor
Psychology
Summary
Dr. Peri Yuksel is a tenured associate professor in the Department of Psychology. Dr. Yuksel's research concerns bilingual language development, parenting across cultures, trauma-informed pedagogy, and effective teaching and learning environments that facilitate student success and engagement in psychological literacy and global citizenship. A signature thread of her scholarship is the documentation of Laz, an endangered language — a rare specialization in which she is a recognized authority, honored with the Isenberg Award, which helped fund the publication and distribution of two children's books written in two Laz dialects and translated into Turkish, Georgian, German, and English.
More recently, her work has centered on student success and mental health, including Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) and post-pandemic wellbeing among students at minority-serving institutions. Her recent work also engages emerging technologies and their implications for higher education, including a keynote on adapting to AI disruption by empowering students' critical thinking and mental health through student-centered teaching. Dr. Yuksel has published in the fields of psycholinguistics, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and international education, drawing on language documentation and preservation, observational, and mixed methods research. She co-directs the DSALL Lab, where she mentors undergraduate students and visiting-scholar research.
Education
Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from The Graduate Center (GC), City University of New York (CUNY), New York.
B.A. in a unique and interdisciplinary area of concentration (AOCs), "Cognitive Psychology and Language Acquisition" from CUNY BA/BS in Interdisciplinary and Unique Studies, CUNY; home school: John Jay College of Criminal Justice (JJAY), CUNY.
Additional Information
Selected Publications
by chronological order (* denotes student/mentee co-author)
- *‡Ozturk, G. N., Yuksel, P., & Yazici, H. (2025). Navigating educational options and future attainments: Exploring adolescents' choices in alternative high school programs in Van, Türkiye. International Journal of Educational Development, 119, 103455.
- Yuksel, P., & Zhang, W. (2025). A brief report on making meaning of FoMO: Post-Covid mental health and wellbeing in a Minority Serving Institute. Discover Mental Health, 5(1), 99.
- Yuksel, P., Aksoy, Ş. G., & *‡Hou, H. (2025). Mental health in a digital world: How problematic cell phone use and personality predict fear of missing out (FoMO) in Gen Z university students from Türkiye and the U.S. Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, 15(1), 1–9.
- Yuksel, P., & Bailey, J. (2024). Designing a holistic syllabus: A blueprint for student motivation, learning efficacy, and mental health engagement. In M. Khaldi (Ed.), Fostering pedagogical innovation through effective instructional design (pp. 92–108). IGI Global.
- Yuksel, P., & Aleksiva, I. C. (2023). Stories of perseverance: Using the Lazuri alboni (alphabet) for the emergence of literary genres of an endangered South Caucasian language. In Z. Unlu & B. G. Hewitt (Eds.), Lazuri: An endangered language of the Black Sea (pp. 113–142). Lincom. ISBN 9781648892219.
- Yuksel, P., *Lowry, C., & Brooks, P. J. (2020). Laz caregivers' talk to their young children: The importance of context and utterance type in eliciting ancestral language use. First Language, 40(3), 268–293.
- Yuksel, P., & Nascimento, F. (2018). Breaking barriers: Developing faculty-led international trips for underserved students. Teaching and Scholarship in Psychology, 4(3), 189–197.
Teaching Philosophy
Dr. Yuksel teaches across psychology from introductory courses to lifespan development, cognition, research methods, and cross-cultural seminars. She scaffolds learning step by step and supports students in learning environments that are active, project-driven, and welcoming. Her faculty-led trips abroad extend this work through high-impact educational practices, turning content knowledge into authentic assignments with real-world application.
Courses Taught:
PSYC-110: Introduction to Psychology
PSYC-150: Development from Birth to Adolescence
PSYC-152: Development from Adolescence to Adulthood
PSYC-154: Lifespan
PSYC-300: Psychopathology of Childhood & Adolescence
PSYC-336: Senior Research Seminar
PSYC-350: Advanced Development
PSYC-343: Learning
PSYC-344: Cognition
PSYC-410: Advanced General Psychology
PSYC-490: Cross-Cultural Psychology
PSYC-2492: Independent Study
PSYC-606: Research Methodology and Applications (F2F)
PSYC-603: Developmental Psychology (F2F, sync online)
HON-360: Upper-Level Seminar: Problem-Solving
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