About

Dr. Kristen Donnelly and Dr. Erin Hinson are The Good Doctors of Abbey Research and the co-founders of the Community Research Institute. They are researchers and educators with social science PhDs. They are also best friends and met while doing their PhDs in Northern Ireland almost 15 years ago.

Kristen has always been a writer, starting with Harry Potter fan fiction in the late 1990s. Erin has also been writing since the late 1990s, if her pre-teen and teenage journals count. Kristen often jokes that The Good Doctors have so many degrees because they happen to be good at what people give degrees for - reading, researching, and writing. 

Few people know that in order to get a PhD, you basically have to write a book. Having published a lot (too much) in academia, they decided they would much rather write in a way that allows them to tell jokes and make Taylor Swift references, while helping folks learn how to treat themselves and others better. 

When it comes down to it, they both love writing because they love telling stories. People learn (and change) not through shame or statistics, but through storytelling. Whether they are exploring the origins of our burnout culture, or trying to understand how smartphones rewired our brains, Erin and Kristen believe telling stories is one of the most effective ways to practice empathy. 

All our relationships (at home, at work, and with ourselves) suffer from a lack of empathy. Kristen and Erin live in eternal hope that the work they do through their writing helps to address that deficit.