A Scholar and a Stylist

When Afiya Mbilishaka went on a tour of Wellesley with her niece, she thought, “I want to go to college here, too!” A year later, the perfect opportunity arose to return to campus. Last fall, Mbilishaka became the College’s first faculty member focusing on Black psychology, jointly appointed as an assistant professor in the Africana studies and psychology departments.

While psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes, Black psychology, Mbilishaka explains, considers the “physical, spiritual, and emotional worlds” of the Black experience and is “much more inclusive of history and culture.” Before learning about the position she would hold at Wellesley, she had never seen a teaching job specific to Black psychology. Mbilishaka’s work focuses on the connection between hair and mental health; in addition to being an interdisciplinary scholar and licensed clinical psychologist, Mbilishaka is a hairstylist and an entrepreneur.

Her interest in hairstyling came long before she pursued psychology. She loved doing hair growing up, and she was her family’s designated stylist for weddings or big dates. At family barbecues, a white lawn chair would become her mini hair salon. During her undergraduate years at the University of Pennsylvania, she worked out of her dorm room. She “wasn’t the most business-minded,” she says, and didn’t charge anything because she enjoyed hairstyling as “a creative outlet.” Mbilishaka also enjoyed “the storytelling,” she says, “the conversations that would happen during the hair care process.”

Mbilishaka found psychology with the help of her friends. After one pre-dentistry semester, she had them pick her classes for the second semester, and intro to psychology was her favorite. As she continued with psychology classes, she found a huge disparity in who was represented in course material. Often, she says, Black people were only included in relation to a deficit or overdiagnosis. Mbilishaka says she made it her “personal mission to correct the racial disparities in the field.”

When considering post-graduation options, Mbilishaka told her aunt she was unsure whether she should become a hairstylist or a psychologist. Her aunt asked, “Well, why can’t you do both?” After completing her Ph.D. at Howard University, Mbilishaka’s work spanned “basically everything” a psychologist can do. She was a professor, she did research and published work on hair and health, and she ran her own private practice. Then she went to hair school. Noticing how her psychologist skill set “was so connected to doing salon work” led her to develop PsychoHairapy, a curriculum on “the active listening skills and the harm assessment” that can happen in the hair salon space, she says. The COVID-19 pandemic sparked a virtual expansion to support hair care professionals serving people coming from isolation into their chairs carrying grief, anxiety, or other mental health concerns.

“We need a cultural redefinition of natural hair that is fortified by law.”

—Afiya Mbilishaka’s statement in support of the CROWN Act in Maryland, 2020

Mbilishaka is currently studying perinatal mental health and its connection to hair, including postpartum hair loss. This work will support “birthing professionals including hair and hair care in their assessments and interventions,” she says. In addition, she’s working on the Beauty Justice Act with Consumer Reports, which aims to ban harmful ingredients in products such as synthetic braiding hair. She’s studying products people use, “health outcomes of hairstylists who are exposed to chemicals all the time,” and “the general wellness related to product use.” She previously served as a subject matter expert for the CROWN Act (see “A Crowning Achievement,” below). Mbilishaka has created the HAIR Lab at Wellesley, which stands for Health, Aesthetics, Identity, and Rituals, and student researchers will work alongside her.

In the classroom, “I love movement. I love interaction. I love laughter,” Mbilishaka says. She sees her role as “being a sort of conductor, creating an educational symphony among the students.” She bookends her classes with rituals that invite everyone to express themselves and connect to “teaching a lot of Afro-cultural content.” Beyond the classroom, Mbilishaka took a group of students to the “Psychology of Black Womanhood” symposium at Spelman College in the spring, where she says she “felt like a new elementary school teacher having a field trip.” She also felt a huge sense of pride watching her students make connections and build a positive reputation in a room with hundreds of Black female psychologists.