Keynote Speakers

Claude Steele is best known for his work on stereotype threat and its application to minority student academic performance. In 2010, he released his book, Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us, summarizing years of research on stereotype threat and the underperformance of minority students in higher education. He has served as the President of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, President of the Western Psychological Association, and as a member of the Board of Directors of the American Psychological Society.

Naika Foroutan specializes in migration research with a particular focus on countries of immigration, their shifting identities, as well as their prevalent attitudes towards minorities.  She has published widely on the themes of shifting identities in Germany, attitudes towards Muslims in Germany as well as on postmigrant societies – a newly developed theoretical framework for analyzing transformations in migration-impacted societies. One of her latest books published in 2018 is Postmigrantische Perspektiven: Ordnungssysteme, Repräsentationen, Kritik (Post-migration perspectives: Classification systems, representations, critiques).

Sandra Graham’s major research interests include the study of academic motivation and social development in children of color, particularly in school contexts that vary in racial/ethnic diversity. She is Principal Investigator on grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Professor Graham has published widely in developmental, social, and educational psychology journals and received many awards. In 2015 she was elected to the U.S: National Academy of Education.

Maurice Crul is internationally known for leading large-scale comparative studies of migrant youth across various European cities. He is the international chair of IMISCOE, a network of excellence that includes 38 research institutes in the fields of migration and diversity in 18 European countries. In 2017 Maurice Crul was awarded the European Research Ccouncil advanced grant for the project Becoming a Minority (BAM) on the integration of people of native descent in majority minority cities in Europe.

Niobe Way is founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity at New York University. She is also past President of the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) and co-director of the Center for Research on Culture, Development, and Education at NYU. Her work focuses on the intersections of culture, context, and human development, with a particular focus on social and emotional development and how cultural ideologies influence developmental trajectories. Her latest co-edited book is The Crisis of Connection: Its Roots, Consequences, and Solution