Our Team
Katherine D. Kinzler, Ph.D.
PROFESSOR and CHAIR, DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY
Professor Kinzler’s research sits at the intersection of developmental and social psychology. Her work focuses on the origins of prejudice and ingroup/outgroup thinking, with an emphasis on understanding how language and accent mark social groups. She is also interested in cultural learning, food cognition and moral psychology.
Professor Kinzler joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Department of Psychology in 2008, as a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor. She spent 2015-2019 at Cornell University, where she was most recently the Chair of the Department of Psychology. She completed her B.A. at Yale in Cognitive Science, her Ph.D. at Harvard in Psychology, and she was a Fulbright Scholar at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the John Templeton Foundation. Her work has appeared regularly in the New York Times and other media outlets, and she was named a “Young Scientist,” one of 50 scientists under age 40 recognized by the World Economic Forum.
Gemma Smith
LAB MANAGER
Gemma oversees the lab’s research projects, develops strategic partnerships, coordinates off-site collaborations and facilitates the work of our graduate and undergraduate researchers. Within the CECR, she unites the DSC Lab and the Developmental Investigations of Behavior and Strategy (DIBS) Lab led by Professor Alex Shaw. She has done psychology research at Trinity University and University of Washington, and worked in the mental health field for several years. Broadly, she is interested in studying children’s early perceptions of disability, the development of empathy, and the role of language development in identity formation. email: gemmasmith@uchicago.edu
Molly C. Gibian
SENIOR RESEARCH ASSOCIATE
Molly advises the lab’s research agenda, integrates systemic project management, writes regulatory documents and provides organizational guidance for the lab and the Center for Early Childhood Research. She has worked in neuroscience and psychology research for Wellesley College, M.I.T., Harvard Medical School, Boston University and Cornell University. Her research interests focus on societal/cultural influences on learning cognition, leadership ambition, identity formation and the development of value systems. In 2021, Molly is pursuing a graduate degree at Stanford University while continuing to support the lab. email: mgibian@uchicago.edu
GRADUATE STUDENTS
Isobel Heck
Isobel is a PhD student at the University of Chicago. Broadly, Isobel’s research asks how children think about social groups and their relations to one another. Current lines of work investigate the development of reasoning about group-based social hierarchies, gendered and racial attitudes about political leadership, the intergenerational transmission of sociopolitical attitudes, and children’s social learning from others’ nonverbal behaviors. email: iaheck@uchicago.edu
Radhika Santhanagopalan
Radhika is a joint Ph.D. student in Psychology and Business. She is interested in children’s social cognition (e.g., children’s beliefs about nationality, gender, and language attitudes), as well as children’s judgment and decision-making abilities (e.g., negotiations, information avoidance, and heuristic judgments).
email: radhikas@uchicago.edu
Rachel King
Kaila Scott-Charles
Kaila is a Ph.D. student in Psychology at University of Chicago and is broadly interested in the emergence of social group attitudes and beliefs. She is particularly interested in the development of children’s understanding of race/ethnicity, wealth, and status and how this impacts social cognition. Kaila’s current projects mainly focus on parents’ beliefs about talking to their children about race and wealth inequality and children’s use of others’ nonverbal behavior to make social judgments (e.g., perceived social hierarchy). email: kscottcharles@uchicago.edu
Jessica Waltmon
Jessica is a Ph.D. student in the University of Chicago’s Developmental Psychology Programand a Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Fellow. She is co-advised by Dr. Katherine Kinzler and Dr. Susan Levine. Jessicagraduated in 2021 with a B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Davis with Highest Honors. Broadly, Jessica’s interests include 1) understanding what shapes our conception of our cognitive abilities and how this influences our behaviors; 2) investigating how this knowledge can bolster interventions in education, industry, policy, and medical fields. Email: jessicawaltmon@uchicago.edu
Marie-France Champoux-Larsson
Marie-France is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology at the University of Chicago. She obtained her PhD in Psychology at Mid Sweden University in Sweden. She was awarded an International Postdoc Grant by the Swedish Research Council to support her research at the University of Chicago.
Marie-France’s research interests combine language, bilingualism, and emotion in social contexts in children and adults. She investigates meta-stereotyping in young bilingual speakers, as well as attitudes and prejudices that children and adults have towards bilingual and accented speakers. She is also interested in emotion perception in a first and a second language, as well as in the mental health and wellbeing of immigrants and linguistic minorities in relation to language use. Email: mfcl@uchicago.edu
Sanam Younis
Sanam is a visiting scholar at the Department of Psychology. She is pursuing her Ph.D. degree at Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad, Pakistan. Sanam is interested in contributing to a deeper understanding of psychosocial factors underlying Xenophobia, keeping in view the impact of self-uncertainty. Apart from this, she is exploring the types and levels of uncertainty that the millennials are experiencing and their potential outcomes in relationship to nationalism, personality traits, extremist propensity, and media discourses. Email: sanamy@uchicago.edu
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANTS
at the University of Chicago
We often have opportunities for new undergraduate research assistants. Please email Gemma Smith (gemmasmith@uchicago.edu) for an application and more information.
Lara Akande ’24
Lara is majoring in Psychology and Economics. She is interested in language, the development of biases and prejudice, as well as children’s understanding of social groups and identities.
Timethius J. Terrell ’24
Timethius is a student at the University of Pennsylvania who intends to major in psychology and minor in legal studies and history. His main interests are the impact of accent biases, especially in business environments, and related legislation. His secondary interests include team member motivation and language acquisition.
Bella Howard ’23
Bella is majoring in psychology and minoring in chemistry. She is interested in the mechanisms in which opinions and biases are formed within children across their development. In the future she plans to continue her research and eventually attend medical school for a career in the psychology field.
Candelas Distefano ’25
Candelas is potentially majoring in Psychology or Comparative Human Development. She is interested in mental health, the development of anxious thoughts, and social decision-making. She works primarily with PhD Student Radhika Santhanagopalan.
Isabella Ramkissoon ’24
Isabella intends to major in Psychology and minor in Media Arts and Design. She is broadly interested in the study of empathy as well as the development of morality in children. She primarily works with PhD student Rachel King.
Kennedi Williams ’24
Kennedi is majoring in Neuroscience and possibly minoring in Comparative Racial and Ethnic Studies. She is interested in the propagation of generational trauma, implicit bias, conflicts between societal and cultural values, as well as language and the nature of code-switching.
Sarah Thein ’25
Sarah is double majoring in neuroscience and psychology on the pre-med track. She is interested in exploring child development, particularly how children form opinions and biases about the larger world. She is also interested in exploring the concept of when children start to develop their own political beliefs separate from those of influential figures in their life.
Sloan Freitag ’24
Sloan is majoring in Psychology and Business Economics. She is interested in the correlation between age and theory of mind, particularly how dependent the correlation is on the child’s frequency of social interactions. She believes this research is especially important given the circumstances of COVID-19, which has limited social encounters.
Sophie Knifton ’24
Sophie Knifton is majoring in Psychology and Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is interested in the development of gendered biases and prejudices as well as human sexuality. She works primarily with PhD student Rachel King.
Nicole Mateo ’24
Nicole Maria Mateo is from The Bronx and is majoring in Psychology and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies with a minor in Data Science. She hopes to explore the systems that have been and are currently failing BIPOC communities that involve housing inequality, policing, and education. A daughter of Black Dominican immigrants, her passion grows more and more every day to uplift her intersectional identity and that of her own community.
Ryan Nguyen ’25
Ryan is majoring in Psychology and Political Science. He is interested in how children develop stereotypes and perceptions of various social groups. In addition, he believes that understanding children’s social beliefs provides an opportunity to understand the roots of many adult social behaviors. He primarily works with PhD student Rachel King.