Madalina Vlasceanu

Madalina Vlasceanu is an assistant professor of environmental behavioral sciences in the Department of Environmental Social Sciences at Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability and the Director of the Climate Cognition Lab. Professor Vlasceanu also holds a courtesy appointment in the Organizational Behavior Unit at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Affective Science at Stanford University and at the Stanford Impact Labs. She is also a faculty affiliate at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and Stanford Sustainable Societies Initiatives. She obtained a PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience from Princeton University in 2021 and a BA in Psychology and Economics from the University of Rochester in 2016.

Prior to Stanford, she was an assistant professor of psychology at New York University. Her research focuses on the cognitive, social, environmental, and political processes underlying belief and behavioral change, with direct applications to climate policy. Guided by a theoretical framework of investigation, her research employs a large array of methods including behavioral laboratory experiments, social network analysis, field studies, randomized controlled trials, megastudies, and international many-lab collaborations, with the goal of understanding the processes underlying climate awareness and action at the individual, collective, and system level. Professor Vlasceanu’s research is theoretically grounded and focused on applications for practice, incorporates an interdisciplinary perspective, and directly informs policies and practices relevant to climate mitigation and adaptation.