Jennifer was an Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor of Social Psychology at the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science (PBS) from 2016 to 2025, where she directed the Societal Psychology Lab, and is now Associate Professor in Psychology at New York University Abu Dhabi and Director of the Psychology In Political and Economic Systems (PIPES) Lab. Jennifer is a Visiting Senior Fellow both at PBS, where she collaborates with PBS faculty and co-supervises PhD students, and at the International Inequalities Institute, where she is involved in the themes on Perceptions of Inequality and on Opportunity, Mobility and the Intergenerational Transmission of Inequality.

Jennifer completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology & Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin, Masters in Social Psychology at LSE, and PhD in Psychology at Harvard University, where she was also held fellowships at the Multidisciplinary Programme in Inequality & Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and in the Lab on Institutional Corruption at the Edmond J. Safra Centre for Ethics. Jennifer then completed a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brunel University, in addition to postdoctoral research at the University of Oslo. Jennifer was a Faculty Associate at the LSE International Inequalities Institute, a member of the LSE Middle East Centre Research Committee, and has held visiting positions at the University of Oslo, Aarhus University, and New York University Abu Dhabi. Before her doctoral study, Jennifer worked as a social psychologist in the UK Civil Service, applying behavioural insights to the understanding of conflict and terrorism, rising to the role of Senior Strategic Analyst.

Jennifer’s research has two strands, united by a concern to articulate the mutual influence of psychological and societal processes. The first applies the lens of social dominance theory to explore the psychological foundations and downstream consequences of socio-political attitudes such as egalitarianism. The second draws on socio-ecological psychology to investigate the impact of socioeconomic strain and free market ideologies on basic decision-making processes. Both utilise a range of methods, including experiments, multivariate behavior genetics, longitudinal surveys, cross-national analyses, and occasionally qualitative and computational methods. This research has been funded by the British Academy, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and the Tobin Project, among others, and is published in journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Jennifer is also elaborating on the implications of her work for poverty alleviation in domestic and international domains, having partnered with the British Psychological Society (Poverty Expert Reference Group, Steering Group of the Campaign on Social Class Inequalities), United Nations Development Programme, and the Indus Health Network in Sindh, Pakistan. Jennifer was Associate Editor of the British Journal of Psychology from 2021-2024, Guest Editor for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022) and the Journal of Social Issues (2024), and is currently Associate Editor at the European Journal of Social Psychology.