APA/APAGS Award for Distinguished Graduate Student in Professional Psychology: Sergio Domínguez Jr.

Abstract

This award honors a graduate student who has demonstrated outstanding practice and application of psychology. "Sergio Domínguez Jr. is a PhD candidate in counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a pre-doctoral intern in health service psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago Counseling Center. As a practitioner-scholar-advocate, their work focuses on facilitators and inhibitors to pleasure, particularly by using a racial-gender justice perspective as a vehicle toward achieving widespread freedom and liberation. Specifically, they are deeply invested in Black and Brown trans people's well-being, ethical and legal professional issues in psychology, and the transformative power of relationships in psychotherapy and in community-engaged psychological practice. Their connection to community and involvement in multilevel advocacy has enabled them to be a trusted collaborator for community-oriented individual, social, and systemic justice efforts. Sergio's dissertation involves a qualitative exploration of the ways trans people's gender euphoria defies systems of power that deprive all people from experiencing racialized gendered pleasure. After graduation, Sergio aspires to continue being a community-rooted psychological practitioner who intervenes individually, socially, and systemically to create pleasure-centric futures. While this award bears their name, this award was not earned by Sergio alone; instead, this award is shared with the many people who have done and will continue to do and support racial-gender justice advocacy." (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).