In Memoriam
Dr. Holly Shablack
It is with great sadness that we mourn the passing of Dr. Holly Shablack, Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Science at Washington and Lee University, who passed away on April 14, 2026 from complications of cancer. She was 36 years old.
Holly was a PhD student in the lab from 2014-2020. She joined us from the University of Michigan, where she did her BA and was a postbacc scholar in the lab of Dr. Ethan Kross. Holly’s graduate research focused on the role of language in emotion. She conducted some of our earliest work on the role of concept knowledge during emotion experiences. Her dissertation examined how having access to specific emotion concept knowledge shaped emotion experience and physiology during a laboratory-based stressor. She also worked on studies examining how children learn emotion words. She paved the way for interdisciplinary collaborations in developmental linguistics and published work showing that the linguistic context that adults use to speak about novel adjectives shapes how children infer the emotional meanings of those words. After graduating from UNC in 2020, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Oberlin College until finding her professional home at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.
Above all, Holly was a beloved collaborator, mentor, friend, daughter, wife, and mother. She chose a career at an undergradute-focused university because she loved the classroom, lab-based mentoring of undergraduates, and shaping the lives of young scholars. During her time in our lab, she brought endless positivity and warmth to every activity she was a part of. She will be deeply missed in our lab family.
