Katherine D. Kinzler is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the College. She is also an affiliate of the Department of Comparative Human Development, the Committee on Education, and the Roman Family Center for Decision Research.
As vice provost for graduate education, Katie advances doctoral education, master's education and enrollment, and non-degree programming at the University, including through UChicagoGRAD and UCProfessional. As faculty director of UChicagoGRAD, she leads the University's resource center for support services, fellowships, internships, and career planning for graduate students and postdocs in academic and professional contexts. Katie oversees the Neubauer Family Distinguished Doctoral Fellows Program as well as the Neubauer Family Assistant Professors Program. She also serves as a member of the board of the UChicago Charter School.
Katie initially joined the faculty in 2008 as a member of the University of Chicago’s inaugural cohort of Neubauer Family Assistant Professors. Prior to serving as a vice provost, she served as chair of the Department of Psychology, where she oversaw an expansion of the department through establishing a new program in social psychology. She also previously served as a deputy dean in the Division of the Social Sciences. A noted graduate student mentor, she was a recipient in 2023 of the University of Chicago Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Award.
Katie’s research sits at the intersection of developmental and social psychology, where she conducts experimental studies with children to reveal the foundations of human social cognition. Her work focuses on the origins and development of prejudice and ingroup/outgroup thinking, with an emphasis on understanding how language and accent mark social groups.
Katie completed a BA in cognitive science at Yale University, a PhD in psychology at Harvard University, and was a Fulbright Scholar at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Her research has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Sciences Foundation. Her work has appeared regularly in the New York Times and other media outlets, and in 2017 she was named a “Young Scientist” by the World Economic Forum. Her first book, How You Say It, exposes linguistic prejudice.
