Kevin Cokley

In 2022, Cokley joined the University of Michigan Ann Arbor as University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor, Associate Chair of Diversity Initiatives, and professor of Psychology.

Cokley's research is focused on racial issues and the impact of the imposter phenomenon in academic and mental health outcomes. He is the author of The Myth of Black Anti-Intellectualism: A True Psychology of African American Students, which was published in 2014. He is the editor of Making Black Lives Matter: Confronting Anti-Black Racism, which was published in 2021.

In 2014, Cokley was appointed as Director of the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis at the University of Texas.

Cokley explores impostor phenomenon among African Americans and other ethnic minorities. Imposter phenomenon is one's belief in and experience of one's self as an intellectual fraud. In his first empirical impostor phenomenon study, Cokley et al. (2013) found that impostor feelings were a stronger predictor of mental health than minority status stress.

Following his Ph.D. degree, Cokley taught at Southern Illinois University Carbondale as an assistant professor from 1998 till 2004, and at the University of Missouri as an Associate Professor from 2004 till 2007. In 2010, Cokley joined the University of Texas at Austin as an Associate Professor and in 2013, he was promoted to Professor of Educational Psychology and African and African Diaspora Studies.

Cokley graduated from Wake Forest University’s Department of Psychology in 1991. Then he received his Master’s degree in Counselor Education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1993. He completed his doctoral studies in Counseling Psychology from Georgia State University in 1998.