News

Tropp Wins Early Career Award from ISPP

Linda Tropp (psychology), director of the Psychology of Peace and Violence Concentration, has received the 2008 Erik Erikson Early Career Award from the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP). Named for the "Father of Psychosocial Development,” the award recognizes and celebrates exceptional achievement and goes to an individual who is a member of ISPP and within a decade of receiving the Ph.D. First awarded in 1982, the list of recipients of the Erikson Award is a compendium of those who are among the most prominent leaders in political psychology today.

The ISPP's Awards Committee is comprised of Catarina Kinvall, associate professor of political science at Lund University, Sweden, who serves as chair; Leonie Huddy, department of political science, SUNY Stony Brook; Orla Muldoon, department of psychology, Limerick University; and Paul Nesbitt-Larking, department of political science, Huron University College, University of Western Ontario.

The committee noted the following: "Tropp's work focuses on issues of prejudice and intergroup contact, group identity, and reactions to group disadvantage. Her work has deep relevance to many ISPP members and goes beyond much current research in social psychology as reflected in the broad array of social psychological outlets in which she has published, including Journal of Social Issues, Psychological Science and Social Psychology Quarterly. She is also director of the Psychology of Peace and Violence Concentration at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Of all the candidates Linda has published the most widely cited articles and chapters, and it is with great pleasure we have selected her for the Erikson Award."

Tropp received her PhD from University of California Santa Cruz and taught at Boston College before joining the UMass Amherst psychology faculty in 2006. She has been a member of the Governing Council of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and a co-editor of an issue of the Journal of Social Issues integrating research and practice on intergroup relations. She serves on the editorial boards of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin and Group Processes and Intergroup Relations. She has received the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues for her research on intergroup contact, as well as the McKeachie Early Career Award for the teaching of psychology.

May 27, 2008