Professor Kipling Williams is Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University, where he has taught since 2004. He earned his B.S. from the University of Washington—Seattle (1975) and his PhD in Social Psychology at The Ohio State University (1981). Prior to coming to Purdue, Williams was on faculties at Macquarie University and University of New South Wales (both in Sydney, Australia), University of Toledo (Ohio), and Drake University (Iowa). He is a pioneer and world-leading expert on social and psychological dynamics of ostracism. In addition to his authored book,
Ostracism: The Power of Silence, he has edited nine books, including
The Social Outcast, and the soon-to-be-published
Handbook of Ostracism, Exclusion, and Rejection. He has been an associate editor of
Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, & Practice, as well as
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and is currently the editor of
Social Influence. Since 2003, he has taught an annual one-week intensive course on Ostracism at the Free University-Amsterdam and has also conducted ostracism workshops in Switzerland, Germany, Hong Kong, and Australia.
His research interests include ostracism, social influence, and motivation in groups. He has published over 150 articles and chapters, with articles in Science, Scientific American-MIND, Psychological Science, and other top journals in the field of social psychology. The Australian Research Council and the National Science Foundation have funded his research. In 2012, he was a Lorentz Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies. He was a co-winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Socio-Psychological (AAAS), and Purdue University’s College of Health and Human Sciences Research Achievement Award (2011) and the College of Health and Human Sciences Faculty Engagement Award (2014).He is past president of the Society for Australasian Social Psychologists and the Midwestern Psychological Association.
