Rate My Professor Nilanjana Dasgupta

Nilanjana Dasgupta is a Provost Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, contributing to the Psychology faculty. She earned an A.B. in Psychology with a minor in Neuroscience from Smith College in 1992, graduating summa cum laude and with highest honors for her thesis, followed by an M.S. (1994), M.Phil. (1996), and Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Yale University in 1998. Dasgupta completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington in Seattle from 1997 to 1999. She then served as Assistant Professor at the New School for Social Research from 1999 to 2002. In 2003, she joined UMass Amherst as Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology, advancing to Associate Professor in 2006, Professor in 2012, and Provost Professor in Psychological and Brain Sciences in 2022. She has held key administrative roles, including Inaugural Director of the Institute of Diversity Sciences since 2018 and Director of Faculty Equity and Inclusion in the College of Natural Sciences from 2014 to 2021.

Dasgupta directs the Implicit Social Cognition Lab, where her research investigates implicit stereotypes and biases, their effects on evaluations, behaviors, self-perceptions, performance, and career choices, with a focus on the plasticity of implicit attitudes through social contexts. Her translational work addresses employment discrimination, STEM educational disparities, and underrepresentation of women and ethnic minorities in leadership, blending lab experiments and field studies. Funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and American Psychological Foundation, key contributions include the stereotype inoculation model. Highly cited publications (over 18,000 total citations) feature 'On the malleability of automatic attitudes: combating automatic prejudice with images of admired and disliked individuals' (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2001), 'STEMing the tide: using ingroup experts to inoculate women's self-concept in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)' (2011), 'Female peer mentors early in college increase women’s positive academic experiences and retention in engineering' (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017), and her first book, Change the Wallpaper: Transforming Cultural Patterns to Build More Just Communities (2025). Awards include the Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Research and Creative Activity (2016), Chancellor’s Medal and Distinguished Faculty Lecture (2016), Distinguished Academic Outreach Award (2014), Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (2009), Fellow of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology (2009), and multiple NSF grants such as ADVANCE and I-Corps. She has presented to K-12 educators, university leaders, business executives, and policymakers on Capitol Hill and at White House roundtables.