About me
Marcia Smith Pasqualini, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology at Avila University in Kansas City, Missouri, and a licensed clinical psychologist. She completed her doctoral training at the University of Missouri–Columbia, followed by a neuropsychology internship and fellowship at the Boston VA Medical Center under the mentorship of Dr. Edith Kaplan. Dr. Pasqualini served on the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, where she investigated facial expressivity and emotion regulation in people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Alzheimer’s disease. Through a Fulbright Research Award, she studied PD and micrographia at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. She then continued her research at the University of Würzburg in Germany, examining how PD affects spontaneous and posed facial expressions, sleep patterns, and emotion regulation. Dr. Pasqualini subsequently joined the faculty at the University of Portsmouth in the UK and served as a co-investigator on a multi-country project designed to improve PD patient education. After returning to her hometown of Kansas City, Dr. Pasqualini renewed her collaboration with colleagues at the University of Würzburg, co-authoring the book Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for People with Parkinson’s Disease and Caregivers: A Guide for Mental Health Professionals (University of Würzburg Press, 2024), which offers practical strategies for addressing stress, emotions, communication, and other psychosocial concerns in individuals and families affected by PD.
