Sebastian Barr, PhD (he/him/his) is a clinician-researcher and consultant with nearly a decade of experience collaborating in and leading research on trans and gender-diverse health, wellbeing, and psychological experience. He is a licensed counseling psychologist and completed his clinical and research training at University of Louisville as a mentee of Drs. Stephanie Budge and Kate Snyder, and at Cambridge Health Alliance under the auspices of Harvard Medical School Psychiatry Department. As a proudly transgender man himself, he values the integration of methodologically rigorous and empirically sound data with community voices and needs. He strongly believes in the ethic (adopted from disability rights activists) of “nothing about us without us,” and is excited to help Transhealth Northampton develop the research wing of our mission and commitment to the community.

Sebastian has contributed to multiple texts and continues to publish his own research and clinical writing on trans and gender-diverse mental health, most recently focusing on the experiences of traumatic stress in the trans community. His research has been recognized by awards from the American Psychological Association’s Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity (also known as Division 44 of the APA), the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and the U.S. Professional Association for Transgender Health. In February 2020, he was a QLGBTI scholar-in-residence with a cohort of writers, researchers, and artists at Faber-Llull in Olot, Catalonia/Spain.  He has collaborated on guidance for researchers studying trans and gender-diverse health and clinicians working with trans and gender-diverse populations, and he often trains, consults, and supervises/mentors in these areas, as well.

Sebastian serves on the editorial board for the peer-reviewed journals Psychotherapy and Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity. For multiple years he served on the executive board for Division 44 of the American Psychological Association, and he has held positions on various DEI-, justice-, and trans-focused committees and task forces at institutional and state levels. He is currently very active in PFLAG Charlotte (Charlotte being one of his hometowns) and operates a part-time remote psychotherapy and assessment practice from his home in Western Massachusetts.

When not working or volunteering, he is happy to spend quiet time with his spouse (Danielle, a family doctor) and their two cats, Jackson and Carl. In his early 20’s he was a club and party DJ in Western Massachusetts under the moniker Blanche Devereauxx and he continues to enjoy making playlists and dancing with friends and his spouse, though it’s been many years since he did any live mixing.