Dr. Wellman joined the University of Mississippi’s Psychology Department in the Fall of 2019 and was promoted and tenured as an Associate Professor of Social Psychology in 2023. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Maine and completed a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship in Culture, Emotion, and Race at Wesleyan University. Prior to joining the faculty at UM, he was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at California State University, San Bernardino, where he received an NSF ADVANCE grant to address issues of diversity in promotion, tenure, and hiring. He recently received another NSF ADVANCE grant to address similar issues at the University of Mississippi.

Professor Wellman's work focuses on how being the target of stigma affects behaviors, well-being, and performance among both low-status and high-status groups. Much of this work explores factors that may influence an individual’s response to discrimination, bias, and intergroup interactions (e.g., system-legitimizing beliefs, group identification, zero-sum beliefs, perceived sigma, etc.). His research has been published in social psychology journals such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the Psychology of Men and Masculinities, and the Journal of Social Issues, as well as interdisciplinary health journals such as Appetite and Stigma & Health.