Research, Knowledge Exchange and the Military Sector

Ken had the opportunity to present and be part of a panel discussion in a fascinating inter-disciplinary workshop on research, knowledge exchange and the military sector held in the Byre theatre. The workshop was an initiative of the visualising war research group and aimed at exploring the practical challenges, opportunities and ethical dilemmas that arise … Read more

Bashar Albaghli completes his PhD

Bashar came to St Andrews supported by Kuwait University, after completing a Masters in the US. The focus of Bashar’s project has been to explore the links between different understandings of religiosity, political factors, and attitudes toward other religious and political groups.  The thesis title is “Religiosity and prejudice in a Western and Islamic context”. … Read more

Kerry O’Brien completes his PhD

Congratulations to Kerry for completing his PhD changes in time for the recent graduation ceremony. Kerry explored several ways of using framing to either make particular identities more salient, or to influence the meaning of those identities. Kerry’s PhD is titled “Framing issues and identities: Aligning the content of group identity with the meaning of issues … Read more

Kerry O’Brien PhD submitted

Kerry O’Brien submitted his PhD at the ANU this week. Kerry’s PhD is titled “Framing issues and identities: Aligning the content of group identity with the meaning of issues to produce normative influence.”  The project was aimed at integrating the Social Identity model of normative influence with the political science literature on issue framing as … Read more

Book chapter on causality in collective action

A recent book explores important issues of causality in a range of domains.  It was great to be part of a group contributing to a chapter exploring how causality plays out in current models of collective action. “Causality in the study of collective action and political behaviour” by Winifred Louis and colleagues.  The chapter appears … Read more

Group interaction: crucible of social identity

Group interaction as the crucible of social identity formation : a glimpse at the foundations of social identities for collective action The collaboration with Emma Thomas and Craig McGarty has led to another exploration of models of social identity and collective action, accepted for publication in Group Processes and Intergoup Relations. Abstract Many of the … Read more

Ken gives conference keynote at GRASP 2014, Linköping, Sweden

Ken had the terrific opportunity to present a keynote address entitled “Encapsulating the things that matter: Exploring identities for learning, social action and well-being” at the GRASP conference in Sweden on May 23rd (9th Nordic conference in group- and social psychology).   The GRASP conference attracts an interesting mix of researchers from across Scandinavia who are … Read more

Social Justice and Psychology

Social Justice and Psychology: What Is, and What Should Be Winnifred Louis, Ken Mavor and colleagues will have a paper published in the Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology on how social psychology struggles with issues of social justice.  The paper is part of a special issue to come out in late 2013. Louis, W. … Read more

Winnifred Louis visits St Andrews

The lab was delighted to host a 2 week visit from Winnifred Louis from the University of Queensland.  Winnifred’s work is best known for her interest in the influence of identity and norms in social decision-making, which she has studied in a wide range of contexts from political activism, peace psychology, health and the environment. … Read more

Emma Thomas visits St Andrews

Emma Thomas is currently on a prestigious Discovery Early Career Research fellowship and based at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia.  Her research focuses on the role of identity processes and emotion particularly in collective action. Some of her work involves advantaged group members acting to overcome injustice through campaigns such as “Water for Life” … Read more