Vanessa Burke, Assistant Professor

Headshot of Dr. Vanessa Burke Office: 204 Audubon Hall

Department of Psychology

Louisiana State University

Baton Rouge, LA 70803

Email: [email protected]

View Dr. Burke's lab webpage.

Dr. Burke will be accepting students for Fall 2025. 

Education

  • 2022, PhD, Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Pennsylvania State University 
  • 2019, MS, Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Pennsylvania State University
  • 2017, BS, Psychology, Bowling Green State University

Research Interests

  • Diversity and inclusion
  • Leadership
  • Power dynamics
  • Mistreatment/harassment

Vanessa Burke's research examines the intersection between diversity and the hierarchical nature of organizations. Her work centers on how demographic (gender, age, race) and behavioral (sexual harassment, emotional displays, leader errors) indicators of power and social status determine who has access to opportunities. Specifically, how do these power and status dynamics manifest through formal positions (leadership) and informal social dynamics (power claiming, maintenance, and loss). She is driven to critically evaluate the way individual employees interact with organizational structures, investigating mixed and evolving findings in the gender and diversity literature.

Representative Publications

Roux*, S. M., Burke, V. (In Press). Making the Abstract Concrete: A Case for Structured Abstracts in Organizational Sciences. Industrial and Organizational Psychology.


Burke, V., Grandey, A. A., Melloy, R. C., Ferris, L., & England, K. (2024) Are women penalized for showing pride at work? Gender disparities in the competence‐warmth tradeoff. Journal of Applied Social Psychology.


Kundro, T. G., Burke, V., Grandey, A. A., & Sayre, G. M. (2022). A perfect storm: Customer sexual harassment as a joint function of financial dependence and emotional labor. Journal of Applied Psychology. 


Burke, V., Grandey, A. A. (2020) “Midlife Crisis” on the Road to Successful Workforce Aging. Industrial and Organizational Psychology.  


* Denotes student author