Dr. Phillip Hammack is an expert on sexual and gender diversity and Professor of Psychology and Director of the Sexual & Gender Diversity Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He uses qualitative and mixed methods to study the experience and development of individuals diverse in their expressions of sexuality, gender, and/or intimacy. Among his major recent contributions are the articulation of frameworks for scientists and the general public to make meaning of the vast cultural changes in understandings of sexuality, gender, and relationships that have occurred this century. These frameworks especially emphasize the growth of fluid and nonbinary thinking, the role of social technologies, and the heightened emphasis on congruence between inner experience and external presentation of sexuality and gender through construction of personal narratives of "authenticity."
Professor Hammack is also an expert in the field of narrative psychology and the intellectual architect (with Bert Cohler) of the concept of "narrative engagement"—the idea that individuals engage with "master narratives" of history and social categories in the course of development and appropriate or repudiate these stories as they construct their own personal narratives of identity. With Ruthellen Josselson, Hammack has articulated a particular approach to narrative methods known as "person-centered narrative analysis" (PCNA).
Professor Hammack's early research examined narratives of youth in settings of political violence in Israel and Palestine. In a longitudinal, ethnographic study published in 2011 as Narrative and the Politics of Identity: The Cultural Psychology of Israeli and Palestinian Youth, Hammack developed a critique of US-based peace programs rooted in social psychological theories of prejudice reduction through intergroup contact. Professor Hammack retired his research program on Israeli and Palestinian youth in 2015 and is no longer engaged in research or practice in this area.