Kris-Stella Trump Receives Scholarly Recognition

Will join OECD and serve with other scholars from around the world

Dr. Kris-Stella Trump, assistant professor of Political Science, has been invited to join the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Expert Group on New Measures of the Public Acceptability of Reforms. The group will look at public attitudes toward inequality and redistribution. Trump will serve together with several outstanding scholars from around the world. Her invitation to join the group is a tremendous recognition of her scholarship. Click here to learn more of her research interests.

Trump has already made important and original contributions to scholarship on attitudes toward income inequality, redistribution, and perceptions of deservingness. Her scholarly promise and accomplishments have been recognized in multiple ways. During the fall of 2020, Trump held a Senior Fellowship at the University of Konstanz (Germany) titled “Politics of Inequality” Cluster of Excellence. Senior Fellowships are rarely granted to junior faculty members which is another indicator for the quality of her research. As a Senior Fellow, she spent September, 2020 – December, 2020 in residence at the University of Konstanz participating in the activities of the research cluster while working on her book project. The College of Arts and Sciences awarded her a Professional Development Assignment to support her Fellowship. In addition, Trump received a “Small Research Grant” from the American Political Science Association for her project “’Hard-working’ immigrants vs. ‘lazy’ natives: How deservingness criteria interact in public opinion.” And just recently, Trump was invited to join the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Expert Group on New Measures of the Public Acceptability of Reforms. The group will look at public attitudes toward inequality and redistribution. Trump will serve together with a number of outstanding scholars from around the world. Her invitation to join the group is also a tremendous recognition of her scholarship. 

Trump has a well-conceived and innovative research program. Broadly located in the subfield of political psychology and political behavior, her research focuses on public opinion toward income inequality and redistribution. Her research addresses attitudes and beliefs about fairness and deservingness. Using often mixed methods of survey research and psychological experiments, she seeks to understand under what circumstances people believe that higher incomes are deserved and what leads them to justify higher degrees of income inequality. And as the mirror image to that focus, Trump investigates under what conditions people feel that redistribution of income is deserved. In her research she has shown that beliefs about deservingness are more important in explaining attitudes toward the politics of inequality and redistribution than the actual material inequality individuals experience.