Oliver Boxell

Biography

Oliver Boxell focuses his research on the relationship between internalized rules-based algorithms for representational "deep structures" and real-time processing resources, and most recently, he is interested in integrating these interests into the field of clinical mental health counseling. He aims to utilize the neurobiological mechanisms responsible for the emergent abstract information structures of the mind, and the restructuring thereof, to augment traditional counseling interventions and develop clinical assessment instruments. 

Boxell, a nationally certified counselor (NCC), has worked clinically in the psychiatry department at the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Strong Memorial Hospital and, more recently, at the Rochester Deep Structure Psychotherapy Clinic. He was a Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Fellow in Counseling and Counselor Education (2019-23) at the Warner School, where he completed his graduate work in counseling. He is also a member of the Laboratory for Aging, Population Health, Disparities, and Intervention Research at Warner. 

Boxell serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Counselor Preparation and Supervision and as an ad-hoc reviewer for journals, including Adultspan, the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Brain Research, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, and Frontiers in Psychology, and for award and research grant programs for the Association for Psychological Science.

Boxell is a member of the American Counseling Association, the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision, the Association for Assessment and Research in Counseling, the International Honors Society for Counseling (Chi Sigma Iota), the Association for Psychological Science, and the International Society for the Philosophy of the Sciences of the Mind. He has received grants from the CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, the Linguistics Association of Great Britain, and the Potsdam Graduate School. Additionally, he served as a judge for the Shadow Carnegie Book Award in 2006 and was a guest blogger for the Microsoft Corporation from 2010-11 on using SharePoint software in higher education. He has worked as a postdoctoral research fellow on a range of counseling and cognitive science projects and has taught a range of counseling, human development, and psychology courses. He has teaching qualifications from the Higher Education Academy and the National Open College Network. Boxell has also won awards for his work on basic psychological needs, psycholinguistics, and the grammar of English, and a combined award for teaching, creative writing, and community service.