Faculty Collaborators & Affiliates

SPARQ’s faculty collaborators and affiliates are leading scholars in psychology and other fields. They participate in projects or are thought-partners of the center.

Jennifer Aaker, Ph.D., is General Atlantic Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Her research focuses on the psychology of time, money, and happiness - specifically how people choose to spend their time and money and how those choices drive lasting happiness. She is the co-author of The Dragonfly Effect and Humor, Seriously.

Jeremy Bailenson, Ph.D., is Thomas More Storke Professor of Communication and Director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford. He studies the psychology of virtual and augmented reality - in particular, how virtual experiences lead to changes in perceptions of self and others. He is the author of Experience on Demand.

Ralph Richard Banks, Ph.D., is the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, Professor (by courtesy) at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, the co-founder and Faculty Director of the Stanford Center for Racial Justice. He teaches and writes about family law, employment discrimination law, and race and the law. He is also the author of Is Marriage for White People?.

Sarah Billington, Ph.D., is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford. She studies sustainable, durable construction materials, their application to structures and construction, and their impact on wellbeing when incorporated into building design. She collaborated with SPARQ on the Healthy Spaces project, which she co-led with Dr. James Landay.

Nick Camp, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Organizational Studies at the University of Michigan and a former graduate student at Stanford and postdoctoral scholar at SPARQ. He studies the influence of race in police-community relations and institutional practices in law enforcement. His research looks at racial disparities in the context, content, and consequences of everyday police encounters. He collaborates with SPARQ on Criminal Justice projects.

Geoffrey Cohen, Ph.D., is James G. March Professor of Education and Professor of Psychology at Stanford, and Professor (by courtesy) at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He studies how people maintain and protect their identities, and then uses that knowledge to design interventions that help close racial and gender achievement gaps in education. He is the author of Belonging: The Science of Connection and Bridging Divides and co-directs SPARQ’s Be the Donor project.

Sara Constantino, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Psychology at Northeastern University and a visiting research scholar at Princeton University. Her research focuses on understanding how different policies or institutions reinforce or mitigate inequities and the narratives and social forces underpinning both opposition to and support for transformative policies. She collaborates with SPARQ on Economic Mobility projects. 

Dora Demszky, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in Education Data Science at Stanford University, and in Computer Science (by courtesy). Her research focuses developing and deploying tools that combine natural language processing, linguistics and input from practitioners to facilitate equitable, student-centered instruction. She collaborates with SPARQ on Education projects. 

Carol Dweck, Ph.D., is Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology and Professor (by courtesy) at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Her work examines the self-conceptions people use to structure the self and guide their behavior. Her bestselling book Mindset documents how adopting a “growth mindset” and understanding people as capable of change and growth can drive improvements in education, business, parenting, and relationships.

Anjalie Field, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on social-oriented natural language processing (NLP). This work includes developing automated approaches to investigating issues like stereotypes, prejudice, and propaganda. She collaborates with SPARQ on Criminal Justice projects and the (Re)Examining Racial Representation on TV project. 

Christopher Gardner, Ph.D., is Rehnborg Farquhar Professor at the Stanford School of Medicine. His work investigates the health benefits of various diets using randomized controlled trials and system-level approaches to promoting healthy eating. He collaborated with SPARQ on the Edgy Veggies project.

James Gross, Ph.D., is Ernest R. Hilgard Professor of Psychology at Stanford. He is a leading researcher in the areas of emotion and emotion regulation. He is a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education and Director of the Stanford Psychology One Teaching Program.

David Grusky, Ph.D., is Barbara Kimball Browning Professor, Professor of Sociology, Director of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford. His research focuses on income inequality, social mobility in the U.S. and abroad, and how big data can be used to better monitor poverty and inequality. He is the author of several books including Social Stratification and Occupy the Future.

Dan Jurafsky, Ph.D., is Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor in Humanities, Professor of Linguistics, and Professor of Computer Science at Stanford. He studies natural language processing and its application to the cognitive and social sciences. He is the author of The Language of Food and coauthor of the textbook Speech and Language Processing. He also collaborates with SPARQ on Criminal Justice and Media + Tech projects.

Ari Kelman, Ph.D., is Jim Joseph Professor in Education and Jewish Studies at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. His research focuses on the ways that people cultivate deep commitments and learn religion across domains including schools, congregations, museums, camps, media, and online. He is author of the book Shout to the Lord and directs SPARQ's Immersive Cultural Experiences project.

Brian Knutson, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Stanford and director of the SPAN Lab. His research focuses on the neural basis of emotional experience and expression. He investigates the topic with a number of methods including self-report, measurement of nonverbal behavior, comparative ethology, psychopharmacology, and neuroimaging. He collaborates with SPARQ on the Bias in Financial Markets project.

James Landay, Ph.D., is Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford. He specializes in human-computer interaction (HCI). His research interests include technology to support behavior change, demonstrational interfaces, mobile and ubiquitous computing, and user interface design tools. He collaborated with SPARQ on the Healthy Spaces project, which he co-led with Dr. Billington.

Robert MacCoun, Ph.D., is James and Patricia Kowal Professor of Law and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford. He is a social psychologist and public policy analyst who studies on a variety of topics, including illicit drug use, drug policy, judgment and decision-making, citizens’ assessments of fairness in the courts, social influence processes, and bias in the use and interpretation of research evidence by scientists, journalists, and citizens.

Dale Miller, Ph.D., is Class of 1968 / Ed Zschau Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Professor of Psychology, and Director of the Executive Program for Nonprofit Leader. His research explores the impact of social norms on behavior, the role that justice considerations play in individual and organizational decisions, and the conditions under which individuals and organizations abandon one course of action to pursue another.

Benoît Monin, Ph.D., is Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Professor of Ethics, Psychology, and Leadership at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Professor of Psychology, and Co-Director of Leading with an Improv Mindset. His research investigates the interplay between self-image and morality - for example, when individuals behave unethically, and how they live with it; the consequences of high or low moral self-confidence; the meaning and role of morality in everyday life; and what empirical psychology can contribute to ethics. He collaborates with SPARQ on Criminal Justice projects.

Paula Moya, Ph.D., is Danily C. and Laura Louise Bell Professor of the Humanities and Professor of English at Stanford. Her teaching and research focuses on twentieth-century and early twenty-first century literary studies, feminist theory, critical theory, narrative theory, American cultural studies, interdisciplinary approaches to race and ethnicity, and Chicanx and U.S. Latinx studies. She collaborated with SPARQ on the RaceWorks project.

L. Taylor Phillips, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Management at New York University Stern School of Business. Her research investigates how people think about and respond to inequality, hierarchy, and privilege, and how their beliefs about race and diversity impact behaviors and perceptions during group interactions. She earned her Ph.D. in organizational behavior at Stanford. She co-directs SPARQ’s Be the Donor project.

Hayagreeva Rao, Ph.D., is the Atholl McBean Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He studies collective action within organizations and in markets. His research and by implication, his teaching, revolves around scaling up mobilization, innovation, and talent in organizations. He is the author of Market Rebels: How Activists Make or Break Radical Innovations and co-author of Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less.

Eugenia Rho, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. She applies machine learning and experimental design to examine linguistic behavior across discussions around substantive social issues. She was a postdoctoral scholar with SPARQ and directs the Exploring the Language of Escalation project.

Steven Roberts, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Psychology at Stanford. His work bridges developmental and social psychology to examine some of the early emerging factors that contribute to social bias. His research focuses on concepts of race, group norms, and social essentialism, and he is particularly interested in how these concepts develop across diverse samples.

Kiara Sanchez, Ph.D., is a Mellon Faculty Fellow in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College. She studies how people communicate about race, racism, and racial identity in close relationships and in educational and online settings. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology at Stanford. She collaborates with SPARQ on the Combating Bias and Increasing Inclusion in Online Communities project.

Jordan Starck, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. His research investigates organizational diversity commitments, racial bias, and racial inequality, often in the context of education. He collaborates with SPARQ on the (Re)Examining Racial Representation on TV project. Contact: jostarck@stanford.edu

Claude Steele, Ph.D., is Lucie Stern Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University. He is best known for his work on stereotype threat and its application to minority student academic performance. He has served in several major academic leadership positions as the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost at UC Berkeley, the I. James Quillen Dean for the School of Education at Stanford University, and as the 21st Provost of Columbia University. He is also the author of Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do.

Robert Sutton, Ph.D., is Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Professor (by courtesy) at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Co-Director of the Stanford Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate of Customer-Focused Innovation. His work focuses on evidence-based management, the links (and gaps) between managerial knowledge and organizational action, innovation, and organizational performance. He is the author of The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt and co-author of Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less.

Catherine Thomas, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychology and Organizational Studies at the University of Michigan. She assesses psychological drivers of poverty and inequality through lab and field experiments in the U.S. and low-income countries. With a focus on agency and dignity, she tests culturally attuned psychological interventions for reducing poverty and mitigating prejudice against people living in poverty. She collaborates with SPARQ on Economic Mobility projects. 

Jeanne Tsai, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at Stanford. She researches how cultural ideas and practices shape our emotions, and the implications for mental health, decision-making, and person perception. She has applied these research insights to how cultural differences in affect expression and perception may influence workplace evaluations and leadership.

Rob Voigt, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Northwestern University. He studies computational linguistics and how it can be used to understand the linguistic mechanisms of bias, conflict, and misunderstanding. He was a graduate student at Stanford and postdoctoral scholar with SPARQ. He collaborates with SPARQ on Criminal Justice projects.

Gregory Walton, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Psychology at Stanford. His work examines the nature of self and identity, often in the context of academic motivation and achievement. He studies the power of "wise interventions" to address persistent social problems - especially how to raise achievement for minority students in education. He is the co-editor of the Handbook of Wise Interventions: How Social Psychology Can Help People Change.

Robb Willer, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology, Psychology (by courtesy), and Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business (by courtesy); Director of the Polarization and Social Change Lab; and Co-Director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. His teaching and research focus on social forces that bring people together (e.g., morality, altruism), forces that divide them (e.g., fear, prejudice), and domains of social life that feature the complex interplay of the two (e.g., hierarchies, politics). 

Jamil Zaki, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Psychology. He studies emotions in social contexts - in particular, why, when, and how people empathize with each other, and the effects that empathy has on social behaviors such as altruism. He is the author of The War for Kindness and directs the Building Empathy Through Film project.