About Us

Lab Director:

Elizabeth Allen, Ph.D.

Dr. Elizabeth Allen is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Colorado Denver. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 2003, benefiting from the remarkable primary mentorship of Dr. Donald Baucom and the opportunities provided in the Couples Lab. She subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Denver in the Center for Marital and Family Studies with Dr. Howard Markman, Dr. Scott Stanley, and Dr. Galena Rhoades. She joined the faculty at the University of Colorado Denver in the Department of Psychology in 2005.

Dr. Allen is interested in a range of issues related to couple functioning, including relationship interventions, extradyadic involvements, military marriages, and the bidirectional influences of relationship factors and mental health.  She appreciates diverse perspectives and seeks to be culturally responsive in her mentorship, research, service, and teaching. She is the recipient of college awards in Mentoring (2013), Research (2012), and Teaching (2011).​​​​​  Along with her co-authors, she has won the 2019 (as lead author) and the 2020 (as co-author), and was a 2023 finalist (as co-author) for the Barbara Thompson Excellence in Research on Military and Veteran Families award granted by the Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University.