Orla Muldoon is currently a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 2007, she will take up the Inaugural Chair of Psychology at the University of Limerick to oversee the development of Ireland’s first department of social psychology. Orla obtained her PhD in Psychology in 1996 and in the same year was awarded the John F. Kennedy Scholarship to attend the ICPSR Summer Program in University of Michigan. 

Since that time, Orla has conducted research on the causes and consequences of political violence in terms of both mental health and social and political attitudes. She has a particular interest in the effects of social divisions on the development of social identities and the limiting effect of violence and divisions on the development of inclusive and multiple identities. Most recently she has been attempting to bring these interests together by examining the relationship between political violence, social identity and well-being. Her research is widely published in peer reviews outlets.

Orla has been a member of ISPP since 1998 and has been a regular attendee of the ISPP annual conference since that time. She is currently a member of the Standing Conference Committee of the British Psychological Society. As such she has considerable expertise in organisation, planning and timetabling of programmes, developing conference support materials and evaluating conference venues which she would bring to Council. She is also personally and professionally committed to the discipline of political psychology and would welcome the opportunity to contribute to the development of ISPP.