PhD Candidate, Social Psychology

Aanchal Setia

Studies how people navigate assigned and professional identities, belonging, and upward mobility.

Aanchal Setia is a PhD candidate in Social Psychology interested in understanding how members of disadvantaged groups navigate identities assigned to them at birth, such as race and gender, alongside their professional identities in high-achievement contexts. Her research examines how navigating these potentially misaligned identities shapes experiences of belonging and identity threat, as well as the strategies people use to pursue upward mobility. She uses a variety of methodological approaches, including computational methods, experiments, and survey research, to investigate these questions across social and professional contexts.