Nilanjana Dasgupta's 'Change the Wallpaper' Wins Axiom Business 'Outstanding Book of the Year'
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Can the actions of ordinary people move culture toward greater justice? Using a science-driven approach to social change, a 2025 book written by Nilanjana "Buju" Dasgupta argues that small changes to the local cultures around us are far more effective in producing structural change than symbolic acts, bias awareness training, or relying solely on good intentions. Her book, Change the Wallpaper: Transforming Cultural Patterns to Build More Just Communities, was recognized for being one of four Outstanding Books of the Year by the Axiom Business Book Awards. "Out of all 2026 Illumination entries, these Outstanding Books of the Year rose to the top for their inspiring messages and excellence, earning Gold Medals," says the organization, one of the largest and most respected guides to business books.
Dasgupta, provost professor of psychology in the College of Natural Sciences's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and founding director of the Institute of Diversity Sciences, is a premier researcher of diversity science and implicit bias (unspoken assumptions about social groups that impact people’s evaluations of, and actions toward, others). She also examines how implicit biases influence people’s self-perceptions, performance, and academic and career choices.
"Wallpaper" is Dasgupta’s metaphor for the elements of culture that are hidden in plain sight in neighborhoods, workplaces, and educational settings, shaping our perspective of the world. They include the design of our physical environment; popular stories that explain social reality, provide morals and takeaways, and guide our behavior; people we see in valued and respected roles who we may or may not relate to; and the tacit knowledge that some of us have while others don’t, to get ahead in life with little friction. These four types of situational nudges interact to compound advantages for some and disadvantages for others.
“For culture change to happen, we first must notice the elements of culture—the metaphorical wallpaper—that create inequality in small cumulative ways before we can learn how to avoid the negative elements and harness the positive ones in coordination with other people to move toward social justice,” says Dasgupta.
Dasgupta argues that, in order to convert these ideas into action in our communities, we need to first step back and observe our local environment and identify its key features that need fixing. This might involve changing the physical design of our spaces to allow for more social mixing among people from different backgrounds and roles. It might involve questioning the social norms we take for granted and the stories we tell and retell—all of which affect people’s mindset and behavior within that environment.
Dasgupta urges us to take action locally where we live and work. Her mantra is “local action has more traction.” So too, collective action has more traction, because it is more resilient to push-back from the status quo. “Culture change is slow, incremental, and very uneven” she remarks. “But it compounds over time, with repetition. Think of it as a relay race, not a solo sprint or marathon.”
Drawing upon 25 years of Nilanjana Dasgupta’s original research integrated with other scholars’ work from multiple fields, the book instills hope by providing readers with actionable steps they can take, collectively with others, to steer their local culture incrementally and systematically toward greater justice and opportunity.
Learn more about the book at changethewallpaper.com.