President Column (Summer 2026)
Joe Miles, Ph.D.
As you have likely seen by now, election results were just announced and I want to congratulate and welcome our incoming Division 49 Board Members: President-Elect: David Songco, PsyD; Domain Representative of Diversity: Kritika Dwivedi, PsyD; Domain Representative of Group Psychology: David Rivera, PhD; Domain Representative of Professional Practice: Sophia Aguirre, PhD; and Student Representative: Alexandra Kim, MA! Thank you for your leadership and service to the Division and I look forward to working with you! I also want to thank everyone who ran for Board positions. Your willingness to serve the Division is seen and appreciated. I hope you will consider running again in the future and, in the meantime, you will consider being involved in the Division by joining a committee. David DeVito is working on updating our committee volunteer interest form to share at the American Psychological (APA) Convention and on the listserv, so please be on the lookout for that soon!
Speaking of the Convention, we it is quickly approaching on August 6-8 in Washington, DC. Kristen Miserocchi, our Program Chair, with the support of Kodee Walls, our incoming Program Chair, and many reviewers, have put together a wonderful program. If you are in DC, I hope you will join us for all our Division 49 programming and, of course, our social hour. We are also hoping to have our “additional programming space” (formerly “hospitality suite”) serve as a homebase and gathering space for members and their guests. We will have Division 49 swag and books by members on display, which will be raffled off during the social hour (If you are a Division 49 member and book author, we would love to have your book included! Please contact David DeVito to let him know). All members are also invited to the Midyear Meeting of the Division 49 Board, which will be 8:30-10:00 AM on Friday, August 7. David DeVito will send a call out for members interested in joining that meeting virtually and will follow up with the information to access it.
As I write this column, my second to last (late) column (sorry, again, Tom!), and reflect on the new leadership of the Division, I have been thinking about the future of group psychology and group psychotherapy. In his 2023 Presidential Address to the American Group Psychotherapy Association, Gary Burlingame expressed the sentiment that “the future of group psychotherapy is bright” (Burlingame, 2023). He highlighted the empirical support for the effectiveness of group psychotherapy, the growing emphasis (and evidence base) for multicultural competence and multicultural orientation, and the increased attention to group psychotherapy in both the public and professional sphere. I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Burlingame’s assessment of the future of group psychotherapy. This is reflected, for example, in the elevation of group psychology and group psychotherapy to specialty status by the APA (which will hopefully soon be renewed, thanks to the leadership and hard work of Noelle Lefforge and others on the Group Specialty Council).
So, it is not the relevance or utility of the theory, research, and practice of group that I have been wondering about. Rather I have been thinking about what the theory, research, and practice of group will look like as our sociopolitical landscape changes and technology evolves. Of course, this intersects with thoughts I have had in my day job about the future of higher education, as funding cuts for scientific research have impacted my colleagues, and questions about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) have permeated my roles as both educator and research integrity officer at my university. The role of AI has been particularly at the forefront of my mind. As research integrity officer, I have been confronted with questions about the boundary between using AI to generate synthetic data sets and research misconduct in the form of fabrication, and more broadly the integrity of research in the age of AI. A colleague shared an interesting report yesterday showing that universities have lagged far behind publishers and national funders in developing AI literacy and valid research practice guidelines, with most US universities in the study being classified as having policies that only consider AI from an academic or plagiarism perspective, not from a research integrity or competency perspective (Zyphur, 2026).
Still, as there are many questions about responsible and ethical use of AI, I have been excited by the possibilities, including within group psychology and group psychotherapy. For example, group psychotherapy researchers have examined the potential for using natural language processing (NLP) to understand session-level group dynamics based on group member utterances, with important potential for providing useful feedback to group leaders (Kivlighan et al., 2025). Others have theorized about the further potential of AI in group practice for things like personalizing interventions or creating efficiencies in the administrative details of running a group (Wong, 2026). Of course, these innovations lead to many additional questions, for example ethical questions related to privacy, the role of human interactions, and the use of AI at all. As we think about the future of group psychology and group psychotherapy in the age of AI, we will have to balance the potential of AI in helping us understand group dynamics and augment group facilitation and administration with the developing ethical safeguards to protect our clients, participants, and the integrity of our research. While technology holds promise for our field, humans are at the heart of group research and practice. I am sure Division 49 members will be central in mapping out an innovative, responsible, and ethical future for this work.
References
Burlingame, G. M. (2023) The future of group therapy is bright! International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 73(1), 1-19, DOI: 10.1080/00207284.2022.2133717
Kivlighan, M., Stremmel, J., Wang, K., Brownstone, L., & Lin, B. (2025). Leveraging natural language processing to enhance feedback-informed group therapy: A proof of concept. Psychotherapy, 62(3), 315–325. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000570
Wong, J. M. S. (2026) Artificial intelligence-supported group facilitation: emerging potentials, cautious approaches, and ethical considerations in social work practice, Social Work with Groups, 49(1), 77-90, DOI: 10.1080/01609513.2025.2540474
Zyphur, M. J. (2026). Responsible AI in academic research: A competency framework for research Ttaining. Instats Policy Series. github.com/mzyphur/responsible-ai-in-research-training. DOI: 10.61700/t31oy23grr.