Ashley Cooper

Ashley Cooper is a PhD Student in the History of Science and Medicine. A recipient of Yale’s Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration Fellowship and the Dean’s Emerging Scholar Fellowship, Ashley’s research lies at the nexus of the history of psychiatry, the history of the transatlantic slave trade, and the history of emotion. Ashley is particularly interested in investigating how historical media depictions of youth suicidality (namely in textbooks, popular articles, advertisements, and newspapers) have served to ossify an image of youth suicidality as a white, masculinized phenomenon within the United States, while simultaneously displacing Black youth from the psychiatric category of suicide.

Ashley graduated from Harvard College in 2021 with Highest Honors in Neuroscience and Anthropology, a Secondary Field in the History of Science, and a Language Citation in French. Her undergraduate thesis entitled, “Racism’s Health Harm on Black Youth Mental Health: From (Neuro)Scientific Orthodoxy to Neuroscience as a Vessel of Visibility,” received the Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize for outstanding undergraduate research and the Harvard Anthropology Department’s Clyde Kluckhohn Prize for interdisciplinary anthropology. During her time as an undergraduate, Ashley was awarded the Mellon Mays Fellowship, the Harvard Foundation Insignia Award, the Julia Shaffner Memorial Prize, the Science Club for Girls Catalyst Award, and a Congressional Recognition from Senator Elizabeth Warren, in acknowledgment of her academic and leadership achievements. 

Ashley received her MPhil in Health, Medicine, and Society from the University of Cambridge in 2022, earning First Class Honors with Distinction and serving as the Lionel de Jersey Harvard Scholar. She also holds a Master of Science from Harvard Medical School in Media, Medicine, and Health.