Nancy Hamilton

Nancy Hamilton, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Kansas. She directs the Hamilton Sleep and Health Laboratory, focusing on sleep’s role in physical and mental health, particularly in posttrauma nightmares and chronic pain conditions like fibromyalgia. Her work integrates transactional stress models with social-cognitive frameworks to explore sleep-pain-stress interconnections.

• Director, Clinical Health Psychology Graduate Certificate
• Director, Health Psychology Graduate Training Program
• Member, NIH Study Sections (MESH, CASE, Academic Research Enhancement Award)
• KU Representative for the Council of Clinical Health Psychology Training Programs (CCHTP)

Research interests center on:

• Sleep as a biobehavioral resource for stress coping
• Sleep disruption in fibromyalgia and its mediation of pain and mood
• Development of the Sleep and Pain Diathesis (SAPD) model
• Posttrauma nightmares in sexual assault survivors (AT NIGHT, Project Mindy)
• AI-driven emotional content analysis in dreams (The Dream Machine)
• Firefighter sleep quality improvement (Project Fire)

Recent publications examine insomnia’s longitudinal impact on wellbeing, sleep’s mediating role in test anxiety-performance relationships, and biobehavioral mechanisms in fibromyalgia. Keywords span sleep medicine, chronic pain, cognitive therapy, and affective neuroscience.

She has mentored 14 graduate students, all employed in relevant fields with research portfolios including NIH F31 grants and conference presentations. Her service includes undergraduate core curriculum development, graduate training reforms, and community initiatives like elementary school running clubs and USD 497 Health Kids policy drafting.

Labs & teams:

• Hamilton Sleep and Health Laboratory
• Collaborations with fire/rescue services
• AI-driven dream analysis (Continuous-RoBERTa project)
• NIH-funded research partnerships
• Graduate certificate program design team