The appointment was announced by Dean of the College Jill Dolan and Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan. Professor Sinclair will succeed Harriet Flower, the Andrew Fleming West Professor in Classics, who has been head of Mathey College since 2010.

Sinclair joined the Princeton faculty in 2008 after teaching at the University of Virginia. She received her doctorate from the University of California - Los Angeles and her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University.  

Sinclair’s research and teaching focus on how inter-group and within-group interpersonal interactions serve as a vehicle by which prejudice and stereotypes are perpetuated, as well as how such interactions can reduce prejudice. She is an associated faculty member in the Department of African American Studies.

She has published many journal articles, including in Education Researcher, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, and Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Sinclair is a fellow at the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), the American Psychological Association (APA), the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), and the American Psychological Society (APS). She recently was elected to the governing board of APS and received the SPSP service award for her role in initiating a program that pairs students from underrepresented minorities with summer research mentors to facilitate the students’ road to graduate school.

In 2012, Sinclair received a Graduate Mentoring Award from Princeton’s McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning in recognition of excellence in mentoring graduate students. She served as director of graduate studies in psychology from 2015 to 2017.

Sinclair said: “I am delighted and honored to be able to serve as the head of Mathey College. My family and I are excited to get to know the students in Mathey, and to work with the incredible staff to foster a stimulating, warm and inclusive environment.”

Dolan said: “We are thrilled to welcome Stacey to the Mathey College community. “Her scholarship, her commitment to teaching and learning, and her interest in how urgent ideas about identities and social groups circulate within a culture will only enhance our residential college community.”