Jim Sidanius received his Ph. D. at the University of Stockholm, Sweden in 1977. Before joining the faculty at Harvard in 2006, he taught at several universities in the United States and Europe, including the University of Stockholm, Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of Texas at Austin, New York University, Princeton University, UCLA and Harvard University.
Professor Sidanius has primary research interests in the interface between political ideology and cognitive functioning, the connection between ethnic and national identities within the context of multiethnic states, the political psychology of gender, prejudice and institutional discrimination, and the evolutionary psychology of intergroup prejudice and conflict. Most of his recent work has concerned some of the implications of social dominance theory, a general model concerning the development and maintenance of group-based social hierarchy and social oppression.