Colin Wayne Leach (B.A. 1989, M.A. 1991, Boston University; Ph.D. 1995, University of Michigan) is a social and personality psychologist who studies status and morality in identity, emotion, and motivation. He is also interested in protest & resistance; Prejudice, stereotypes, …isms; Meta-theory, methods, and statistics; and trans-disciplinary approaches (e.g., Africana Studies, social behavioral science).

At Columbia University, he is Professor of Psychology & Africana Studies at Barnard College; Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies; and Graduate Faculty of Psychology in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Prof. Leach’s previous faculty appointments include the University of Connecticut, University of California-Santa Cruz, and the University of Sussex (England). He is an elected fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology and the Society of Personality and Social Psychology and has held research fellowships from the U.C. Berkeley Chancellor, as well as the Ford and Raoul Wallenberg foundations. Prof. Leach has lectured in over a dozen countries and has been a visiting professor on four continents. He is a 2017 recipient of the Kurt Lewin medal for scientific contribution from the European Association of Social Psychology, and his research has been supported by the (US) Ford Foundation, the (UK) Economic and Social Research Council, the European Science Foundation, and the (Dutch) Organization for Scientific Research.

In addition to authoring nearly 100 journal articles and book chapters, Prof. Leach has co-edited the volumes Psychology as Politics (Political Psychology, 2001), Immigrant Life in the U.S. (Routledge, 2003), The Social Life of Emotions (Cambridge, 2004), and Societal Change (Journal of Social & Political Psychology, 2013). He is currently co-editor of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin and former Associate Editor of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and European Journal of Social Psychology.