Karen Cook

Karen S. Cook is the Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology and Vice-Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity at Stanford University. She conducts research on social interaction, social networks, social exchange, and trust. She has edited a number of books in the Russell Sage Foundation Trust Series including Trust in Society (2001), Trust and Distrust in Organizations: Emerging Perspectives (with R. Kramer, 2004), eTrust: Forming Relations in the Online World (with C. Snijders, V. Buskens, and Coye Cheshire, 2009), and Whom Can We Trust? (with M. Levi and R. Hardin, 2009). In 1996, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 2007 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, in 2014 she was elected to the governing Council of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2018 she was elected to the American Philosophical Society. In 2004 she received the ASA Social Psychology Section’s Cooley-Mead Award for career contributions to social psychology. In 2005 she co-authored Cooperation without Trust? (with R. Hardin and M. Levi). From 2001 until 2005 she served as Stanford’s Senior Associate Dean for the Social Sciences. She is the founding Director of the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences.