Rashelle Litchmore

Rashelle Litchmore is a critical cultural and applied social psychologist. She utilizes a variety of qualitative research methods, including phenomenology, ethnography, and discursive psychology to study race, culture, social policy and how these shape child and adolescent development.

Litchmore teaches “Introduction to Human Development”, “Child and Family Social Policy”, and “Child Rights/Public Policy”. In these courses she emphasizes the roles of socio-cultural and policy environments in shaping child developmental outcomes. In 2024 she was awarded the Helen Mulvey Faculty Award for Fostering Student Achievement.

Litchmore’s research spans both the United States and Canada. She has published research on Black-Canadian adolescent identity negotiation, and Black-Canadian girls navigation of racist and sexist school environments, and implications for identity development. She has also investigated the socio-emotional impacts of school consolidation for racial and socioeconomic balance in a southeastern Connecticut school on BIPOC middle-school children’s sense of belonging. Litchmore is currently partnered with community organizations in the Greater Toronto Area to examine the emotional and social development of neurodivergent Black-Canadian adolescents, with attention to the socio-cultural resources that they rely on in establishing agency and achieving self-defined success.

Litchmore’s long term goals involve establishing a framework for understanding the socioemotional development of minoritized children and adolescents in North America, accounting for intersectional identities including gender, neurodiversity, and ethno-cultural backgrounds.

Prior to her appointment at Connecticut College, Litchmore served as a Senior Policy Advisor for the Anti-Racism Directorate in the Government of Ontario, Canada. In this role she provided policy advice for addressing systemic barriers faced by racialized and Indigenous children and youth in the education, child welfare, justice and health sectors. She also co-developed the province’s first Anti-Black Racism Strategy (ABRS).

Litchmore has also worked and volunteered in community and post-secondary settings to create opportunities for access to post-secondary education and to support the learning of First Generation, Black, racialized and Indigenous students in Ontario. This includes the establishment of the Imani Mentorship Program at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus to support middle and high school students’ academic outcomes in 2006.

She is currently a consulting editor for the Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, and an Editorial Board member for Theory and Psychology.

PUBLICATIONS, REFEREED JOURNALS

Bhatia, S. & Litchmore, R. (2022). Race, Racial Identity and Rethinking Cultural Psychology. In Slife, B. D., Yanchar, S. C. & Richardson, F. C. (Eds.) Routledge International Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (pp.285-307). Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003036517-19

Litchmore, R. (2021) “She’s very known in the school”: Black girls, race, gender and sexual violence in Ontario schools. Qualitative Psychology. Advanced online publication http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/qup0000221

Litchmore, R.V.H., & Safdar, S. (2016). The meanings of hijab: Views of Canadian Muslim women. Asian Journal of Social Psychology. 19, 198-208. doi: 10.1111/ajsp.12141

Litchmore, R. V. H., Safdar, S., & O’Doherty, K. (2016). Ethnic and racial self-identifications of second-generation Canadians of African and Caribbean heritage: An analysis of discourse. Journal of Black Psychology, 42, 259-242, doi: 10.1177/0095798414568454 

Litchmore, R.V., & Safdar, S. (2014). Perceptions of discrimination as a marker of integration among Muslim Canadian youth: The role of religiosity and ethnic identity. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 16, 187-204. doi: 10.1007/s12134-014-0337-5

BOOK CHAPTERS

Litchmore, R. V. H. & Safdar, S. (2016). Young, Female, Canadian and Muslim: Identity negotiation and transcultural experiences. In C. H. Mayer & S. Wolting (Eds.). Purple Jacaranda Narrations on transcultural identity development (pp. 59-67). Waxmann Publishers: Munster, Germany. 

RESEARCH REPORTS 

El Masri, A., Choubak, M., & Litchmore, R. (2015). The Global Competition for International Students as Future Immigrants: The role of Ontario universities in translating government policy into institutional practice. Toronto: Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario.

Litchmore, R. (2015). Developmental evaluation report for the Guelph-Wellington Situation Table: July 2014 to February 2015. Guelph: Community Engaged Scholarship Institute.

Litchmore, R. V. (2012). Improving client access to the Ontario Benefits Directory. Toronto: Ontario Public Service.