Prof James L. Gibson, Extraordinary Professor in Political Science at Stellenbosch University and member of ASAF honoured with numerous awards

Prof James L. Gibson, Sidney W Souers Professor of Government at Washington University in St Louis, USA, and extraordinary professor in the Department of Political Science at Stellenbosch University has received numerous prestigious awards and rankings for his research in the field of Political Psychology in the last couple of years.

In 2018 Prof Gibson was ranked first in terms of the impact of his research and first with articles published in top publications, using a constructed Google measure of research productivity.  This is an extraordinary    achievement given the stiff competition of thousands of political scientists in the USA alone. In 2022, in Research.com’s ranking of the top 1000 political scientists in Law and Political Science Prof Gibson was ranked number 35 in the world and number 23 in the USA.

Prof Gibson, who is a prolific scholar, has recently received the highly prestigious Harold Lasswell Award for Outstanding Scientific Accomplishment in Political Psychology that goes to an individual deemed to have made a distinguished scientific contribution in the field of political psychology.  In 2011 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award for the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association, honouring a distinguished career of scholarly achievement.  Over his career Prof Gibson has been recognized by five different political science subfields – that of (1) comparative politics, (2) race and ethnicity politics,(3) political organizations and parties, (4) law and courts, and (5) state politics and policy.

In 2022. he and his co-author Prof Michael J Nelson (Pennsylvania State University) received the C. Hermann Pritchett Book Award for their book “Judging Inequality: State Supreme Courts and the Inequality Crisis” (Russell Sage Foundation, 2021). The book was also recognized with the Virginia Gray Book Award (for the best political science book published on the subject of U.S. state politics or policy in the preceding three calendar years).

Prof Gibson is a collaborator of Prof Amanda Gouws, SARChI Chair in Gender Politics in the Department of Political Science.  They have been collaborating since 1992.  Their co-authored book “Overcoming Intolerance in South Africa: Experiments in Democratic Persuasion” (Cambridge University Press, 2003) received the prestigious Alexander George Book Award for best book in Political Psychology in 2003.  This book using vignette methodology attempted to determine if attitudes of intolerance could be changed to tolerance and made an important contribution to this body of scholarship.  Prof Gibson wrote two more books on South Africa, making it a trilogy –  “Overcoming Apartheid: Can Truth Reconcile a Divided Nation” (Russell Sage Foundation, 2004) and “Overcoming Historical Injustice: Land Reconciliation in South Africa” (Cambridge University Press, 2009).  These three books make a unique contribution to the field of political psychology in South Africa that is still in its infancy. The trilogy is highly cited, with “Overcoming Apartheid” being widely regarded as the definitive academic analysis of South Africa’s truth and reconciliation process.

Currently Gibson and Gouws are collaborating on a project to determine which variables contribute to the normalization of gender-based violence, using vignette methodology embedded in survey research.  Their latest paper, with the title “Toward an understanding of the normalization of gender-based violence: accepted by exceptions?,” was recently listed on the SSRN’s pre-publication site as being in the top ten downloads.

Prof Gibson is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAF).