Jennifer Richeson Keynote Speaker

Jennifer A. Richeson is the Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology at Yale University and a fellow of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. Growing up in Baltimore, Maryland, her experiences across diverse educational settings – from a predominantly white private elementary school to a majority-black public middle school and an all-girls high school – sparked her interest in questions about race and gender that would shape her career.

After earning her B.S. in psychology from Brown University (1994) and her M.A. (1997) and Ph.D. (2000) in social psychology from Harvard University, she served as an assistant professor at Dartmouth College and held the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair at Northwestern University.

Richeson’s research examines psychological phenomena related to cultural diversity, using tools from psychology and neuroscience to study how people experience and navigate racial and other forms of societal diversity. Her work explores the effects of prejudice and stereotyping on brain processes and behavior in intergroup interactions, as well as how people reason about and respond to societal inequality and injustice. Through her research and teaching, she aims to foster understanding of intergroup relations and contribute to better public policy for diverse social environments.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Richeson has received numerous prestigious honors including the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contributions to Psychology from the American Psychological Association, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship.