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Keon West

 

Like many others in SPSSI, his research investigates ways to identify and reduce prejudice. He tends to use quantitative methods and have (especially in the past) focused heavily on intergroup contact and its derivatives (extended contact and imagined contact). Recently, however, his work has addressed more fundamental questions in prejudice research. Examples include: (1) when we believe that someone belongs to a stigmatized outgroup (e.g., how many kisses does it take before you’re considered “gay”?); (2) whether prejudiced people even know that they’re prejudiced and; (3) whether microaggressions hurt White people to the same extent that they hurt ethnic minorities. He makes a particular effort to focus on groups that may be overlooked or underserved, even by other researchers of prejudice. The primary example is his work on sexual prejudice in Jamaica, a nation with much higher levels of sexual prejudice than the USA, but one that receives much less empirical attention. He has been a member of SPSSI for 10 years, and in that time he has been honourably recognised twice. In 2015, he received the Michele Alexander Award for Scholarship and Service – an award that recognizes excellence in both academic scholarship and impactful, real-world service and activism. In 2017, he received the SPSSI Award for Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring. He has served on the SPSSI council for 3 years, most recently as the (exiting) chair of the communications committee. He holds several managerial and leadership positions including the director of Equalab (http://equalab.co.uk) and the Principal Investigator and managing director of a European Research Council Starting Grant (€746,000.00).