Sylvia Perry

Sylvia Perry co-directs the CASBS Summer Institute on Diversity, which successfully launched its inaugural class in the summer of 2023. The CASBS Summer Institute focuses on understanding when, how, and why difference makes a difference in the social sciences. By fostering collaboration, providing support within an academic community, and offering professional development opportunities, the Institute aims to empower early career scholars from underrepresented backgrounds in higher education. Her research is situated at the intersection of social, developmental, and health psychology, and she investigates how racial bias awareness develops, as well as the implications of bias awareness for prejudice reduction, intergroup contact, and health disparities. Specifically, her work answers questions such as (1) To what extent do norms around admitting and discussing racism contribute to anti-racism? and (2) How does White parental racial socialization shape the development of their children’s attitudes and behaviors toward Black individuals?

Perry is an associate professor of psychology and an Institute for Policy Research faculty fellow at Northwestern University. She is an associate editor for Social and Personality Psychology Compass. Her work has been published in top journals such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, Developmental Psychology, and Social Science & Medicine. Perry has received numerous awards for her research, including the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s SAGE Young Scholar Award (2021) and the Ann L. Brown Award for Excellence in Developmental Research (2024).  She is an elected fellow to the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (2024), the Association for Psychological Science (2021), and the Society for Experimental Social Psychology (2019). She was the 2022-23 SAGE Sara Miller McCune CASBS Fellow and is a current research affiliate.