I am pleased to announce that Hazel Rose Markus is the recipient of the third annual International Society for Self and Identity Career Contribution Award. The Career Contribution Award recognizes outstanding contributions to theory and research on self and identity that span a career, and that promote and inspire creative and integrative work. Prior winners of the ISSI Career Contribution Award are Marilyn Brewer and Abraham Tesser The selection committee this year was comprised of Jennifer Crocker, Abraham Tesser, and Brenda Major.

Few contemporary scholars in psychology have influenced a field as much as Hazel Rose Markus has influenced the study of self and identity. Her work profoundly affected the way we think about the self. Her dissertation on self schemas, published in 1977, influenced a generation of researchers by integrating the methods of cognitive psychology into the study of self representations. This landmark paper legitimated the self as a subject of scientific inquiry and brought the study of the self squarely back into the mainstream of experimental social psychology. Hazel followed with a river of integrative and influential papers, bringing our attention to the myriad ways in which self-representations affect social behavior. These included classic and heavily cited papers on possible selves, self-regulation, and the impact of the self on the perception of others.

Not content with having reinvigorated and revolutionized one field, Hazel did so again in 1991 with publication of her groundbreaking paper on culture and the self with Shinobu Kitayama. This work forced all of us to question our assumptions about the nature of the self and to recognize the importance of culture in self representations and motivation. By highlighting the interdependence between psychological structures and sociocultural environments, it also transformed the study of social psychology.

Hazel received her B.A. from California State University at San Diego and her Ph.D. from The University of Michigan in 1975. Showing outstanding foresight, Michigan immediately hired her as a faculty member after awarding her a Ph.D. She remained at Michigan until 1994, rising through the ranks to Professor in the Department of Psychology and Research Scientist at the Research Center for Group Dynamics, Institute for Social Research. Since 1994 Hazel has been the Davis-Brack Professor of Behavioral Sciences in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. She also Co-directs the Research Institute of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford. Hazel has served on the editorial boards of numerous journals as well as on study sections at both the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation. She is a fellow of APS and APA and a member of the McArthur Research Network on Successful Midlife Development. In 1995 she was elected to the National Academy of the Arts and Sciences.

Hazel Rose Markus’ many and multifaceted contributions to the study of self and identity make her a clearly deserving recipient of the third annual Career Contribution Award from the International Society for the Study of Self and Identity.