Nilanjana Dasgupta, Ph.D.
Provost Professor of Psychology and the founding Director of the Institute of Diversity Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
Nilanjana Dasgupta, Ph.D. is a Provost Professor of Psychology and the founding Director of the Institute of Diversity Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her Ph.D. in social psychology from Yale University and a bachelor’s degree in psychology and neuroscience from Smith College. She is a leader in research on implicit bias and science-driven interventions to create positive culture change. She designs social psychological interventions and tests whether and when they reduce the impact of implicit bias and structural barriers on young people in higher education and early careers using lab and field experiments.
Dasgupta’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health and featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, International Herald Tribune, NPR, Wired, Slate, PBS News Hour, ABC News, Boston Globe, Scientific American Mind, and many other outlets. Her work has been recognized by the NSF CAREER award, Hidden Bias Research Prize from the Kapor Center for Social Impact in Silicon Valley, the Application of Personality and Social Psychology Award from the Society for Personality & Social Psychology, and other awards.
Her passion is to apply discoveries from the social and behavioral sciences to inform law, policy, science, technology, and education. She served on an academic-industry thinktank, called Catalyze Tech, to enable coordinated action by tech companies to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in the tech industry underpinned by research-driven best practices. Dasgupta also co-authored law review articles with legal scholars and has given presentations to law partners and general counsels of businesses on how to bridge the gap between organizations’ mission to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and its actual implementation in hiring and talent development using social science research.
Dasgupta’s new book, Change the Wallpaper: Transforming Cultural Patterns to Build More Just Communities, was published by Yale University Press in January 2025.
