The SASP Early Career Award is awarded to an exceptional emerging scholar who has made an outstanding contribution to the field of social psychology in Australasia.
The 2025 SASP ECR Award goes to Dr. Kelly Kirkland.
Kelly will present her research at the SASP-ACPID 2025 Conference in Melbourne.
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Kelly Kirkland!
Dr Kelly Kirkland received her PhD from the University of Queensland, completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Melbourne, and is currently undertaking her second postdoc in the School of Psychology at UQ.
Her first line of research investigates how economic inequality shapes social life, revealing how disparities in wealth and status influence cooperation and cohesion across the lifespan and around the world. Her second program examines moral cognition and societal polarisation, focusing on how people form, express, and defend moral beliefs in divided social contexts.
Drawing on diverse methods, including laboratory experiments, longitudinal surveys, large-scale cross-cultural studies, and online simulations, she integrates perspectives from psychology, economics, and political science.
Collaborating with international teams across more than forty-five countries, her work aims to advance understanding of how social and moral processes shape collective behaviour.
Contact Kelly at .
More details about SASP Awards and Funding, including application criteria and previous recipients, can be found at https://sasp.org.au/news/awardsfunding/.