As my tenure as your President is drawing to a close, I am happy to say that despite the challenges associated with COVID-19 and the challenges in many places with political upheavals (and/or with the need for political change) besetting ISPP members, we have been able to make some progress on our long-term goals with the help of devoted members of the Governing Council (GC), program co-chairs, section chairs, staff, and many other ISPP members who serve on committees and volunteer in other ways. In this spirit, I summarize a little of our progress and ask for your continued help if you are able.
First, thanks to all who stood for election for the GC and to the Nominations Committee. It was a uniformly wonderful slate. I remind all that there are always ways to serve ISPP, whether one is an officer or not.
What is Keeping Us Busy? A long-term finance committee is helping us plan for possible future reductions in royalty income. The push for open-access research has many publishers anticipating this, and we know we must keep membership dues and conference registration affordable. This follows several cost-cutting decisions the GC made in the past few years.
We have the conference locations for the next three years planned: It happens that the incoming President, Tereza Capelos, will get to host the 2022 conference in her hometown of Athens. Sev was able to negotiate a refund for 2021 with the Omni in Montreal. ISPP was able to get a 100% CREDIT for our deposit for 2021 towards re-booking the conference at the Omni for 2023, followed by meeting in Santiago, Chile in 2024, the hometown of who will then be past-President, Roberto Gonzalez. We are aware that virtual conferences are more accessible, and we continue to keep our eyes out for when hybrid conferences might become affordable.
Several GC members are researching the extent to which new problems that can beset scholars (e.g., mobbing) are a problem for ISPP members, and if so, how ISPP can help. ISPP is committed to diversity and inclusion, and that literally means welcoming everybody. If you were not able to participate in our research survey (the demographics suggest to me that we may have sent it at a bad time of the year for mid-career scholars) please do so at this link. To the 700 or so who responded, thank you! The survey has no secret agenda. Having basic facts instead of guesses about our membership and finding out what are or are not problems is important.
The Scholars Under Threat committee continues to assess difficult situations for members around the globe and to collaborate with the international Scholars At Risk organization. I urge you to contact or join SUT and to contribute to ISPP’s scholar support fund. ISPP Ambassadors continue to engage in dialogue with potential members, support each other’s research, and they will host some of the roundtables and social hours at our conference in July.
Research and Teaching Resources. Through ISPP Ambassadors, I’ve learned that there are no real texts on research methods in certain languages, and that many members and their students cannot collect primary data, nor do they have software licenses. I ask your help with some solutions I am concocting. We are constructing an index of websites in multiple languages for doing sets of basic-to-fancy statistical procedures in R or using other free software, to post on ISPP’s website. I’ve prepared a 2-page document listing free global data sources such as from the UN or opinion polls, and I would welcome having it augmented and especially translated into several languages. Since it is advisable to collaborate with people in specific groups and countries and regions when doing work there, if you would like to offer your name as a potential area expert on particular regions or socio-political issues, please email me your name and email. If you have any methods tutorials/lectures yourself (any topic), and/or would be willing to translate other people’s materials, please contact the Teacher's Corner. Both originators and translators will be acknowledged.
Contemporary Violence. I want to acknowledge that the Executive Committee recently received a thoughtful letter signed by about 100 ISPP members asking us to support Palestinian scholars because of the heightened violence they are experiencing. Our responses to the letter will be ongoing. Tereza Capelos and I met with four of the letter-writers last week and I have corresponded with other interested members about the broader situation. I am happy to hear from and have meetings with anybody else concerned with the issue; conversations can help understanding more than some series of one-way statements. The Executive Committee will meet soon in response not only to this letter, but to other political situations that have affected members in the last many months. We are striving to determine practical ways to support our mission as a non-profit, scientific and educational society which welcomes members “across disciplinary, national, and ideological boundaries,” (as our Constitution says) in ways that are fair, consistent, inclusive, and do not ignore the many political inequalities in the world. The wisdom and good will of our members help all of us.
Some ISPP programs already in place are pertinent: The Scholars Under Threat Committee runs a twinning program to match scholars who are hampered by political situations (e.g., have lost jobs or the ability to travel) with other ISPP members for collaboration. ISPP has a policy to offer free one-year memberships to scholars under threat whose financial situation makes membership unaffordable. As President, I am sponsoring any Indigenous person or other underrepresented scholar who needs funding to attend the 2021 conference. The conference program will feature some relevant roundtable discussions; for example, concerning the difficult political situations in a number of regions and challenges of doing research in such situations, and the benefits of collaborating with understudied groups in research. With the theme of this year’s conference, I intended to bring attention not only to the work and experiences of Indigenous persons, who are sometimes overlooked, but also to invite all our imaginations on how a good number of the domestic and cross-national political difficulties nearly all people experience are an aftermath of colonization and of as-yet incomplete and difficult processes of decolonization.
Sharing Information. I wondered if it might also be useful to share good practices for workplace issues such as evaluations for tenure or classroom policies around COVID-19 on ISPP’s website. Let me know what you think. My university opted to extend tenure clocks by one year because of COVID-19 and to let us explain how COVID-19 affected our work on our annual merit evaluation forms. In the US, one can sometimes get one’s university to adopt a better policy by telling administrators that a comparable institution has a better practice. If there are good policies or practices or think would be informative to other members, please let us know and we can post them.
Why You Should Attend the Conference! On the survey from September 2020, we learned that people who had attended the 2020 conference wished there were more chances for meeting others and networking. In response, we have organized two all-conference breaks that will be social sessions. In those, everybody will be randomly put into a “Zoom room” with a handful of others to get to know, so I hope you can simulate making friends in line at the reception table. In addition, there are several social sessions that may interest different sets of people, such as ISPP parents, LGBTQIA+ members, Arab scholars, Indigenous scholars, ISPP (Summer) Academy alumni (fellows & instructors), and a big variety of others. Each social session will provide a chance for newcomers and longer-term ISPP members to meet and discuss common interests; every session is open to all. I suggested that using languages other than English may be the friendliest thing to do in many of them, so please do not put off if you enter a room and find this is the case; I’m sure people are polite enough to find common languages to communicate. Award winners will also be celebrated at the conference. The positive side-effect of the virtual conference is that lack of travel restrictions mean people from at least 58 countries will be participating!
Our program co-chairs, Allison Harell and Carla Houkamou, have organized three novel keynote speakers whose talks promise to enrich our understandings of the complex and diverse world(s) we study. Dr. Jeffrey Ansloos (University of Toronto; Fish River Cree Nation), a registered psychologist working in a policy department and serving to prevent suicide, will speak about the Indigenous theories of change and injustice. Dr. Waikaremoana Waitoki (University of Waikato, Māori) is a clinical psychologist whose work has been dedicated to promoting culturally-appropriate psychological definitions and treatment for Indigenous Persons. Dr. Paula McClain (Duke University, USA) is a political scientist well-known for her research on racial minority politics, for her mentorship (of several ISPP members), and for her successful programs to bring a diversity of undergraduates into political science.
We’re doing our best against the 24-hour clock by featuring a keynote, roundtables, social sessions, and symposia at key times in 3 time zones, and also in keeping the conference recordings available until the end of August! I do hope to see you there, and I look forward to learning more from you. Thank you for electing me to serve you. It has been an honor.
Our 2025 Annual Meeting is expected to be held in Prague, Czech Republic. If you are interested in hosting a future conference of ISPP, please contact the Central Office to obtain the necessary guidelines and materials.
Call for the Twinning Program
Call for the Twinning Program in English [see below for the call in Arabic, French, Spanish and Turkish]
We are happy to announce that we are still accepting applications for our New Twinning Program among Scholars under Threat (ISPP members who lost their academic positions or their income in direct connection with political persecution and/or to members who have been displaced as a result of political persecution). The New Twinning Program has been set up with the aim of facilitating scholarly collaborations between threatened political psychologists and program partners. These collaborations can offer the opportunity for threatened scholars to continue their academic activities, maintain and advance their careers, and integrate into international political psychology; furthermore, partners can engage in political advocacy on behalf of threatened scholar. We are grateful to the 24 scholars who have already expressed their interest to work together with a scholar under threat as partners. We would kindly like to ask our members to reach out to those scholars within their networks around the world who may benefit from participating.
You can find more information about the Twinning Program here.
ISPP is committed to the protection of its members whose academic freedom is at risk anywhere in the world due to the political context where they work and/or live. Therefore, we offer emergency funds to members who lost their academic positions or their income in direct connection with political persecution and/or to members who have been displaced as a result of political persecution and are without an official affiliation or income in their current location. You can help by donating to the ISPP Scholars under Threat fund through this link.
ISPP has recently supported 17 scholars from Turkey. Therefore, at the moment we cannot accept applications for emergency funds. We are currently collecting donations in order to be able to reopen the emergency fund.
Lab Manager/Research Assistant at the Centre for the Politics of Feelings
We invite applications for 2 full time and 1 part time PhD studentships in the School of Psychology at Keele University. Our research spans the breadth of Psychology and includes qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches. Our academic staff have expertise in:
Cognition, Brain & Behaviour
Developmental Psychology
Health & Well-being
Social and Political Psychology
Interested candidates must collaboratively develop a PhD research proposal with a School of Psychology academic staff member https://www.keele.ac.uk/psychology/people/) whose research interests and expertise align with their own research interests. This proposal must be submitted as part of the application. Applications will be evaluated based on the quality of the proposal, appropriateness of the supervisor, applicant's academic background and suitability for the project. For general inquiries and help with identifying appropriate supervisors, you may contact the School's Postgraduate Research Lead: Dr Masi Noor.
The new interdisciplinary Centre for the Politics of Feelings, a partnership between the School of Advanced Study, University of London and Royal Holloway, University of London, is hiring a Lab Manager/Research Assistant. The new hire will primarily assist the Centre’s research team and partners in the development, implementation and dissemination of the research and the Centre’s operations.
This position requires a Bachelor’s degree in psychology, political science or a related discipline and a
Master’s level degree in these areas is highly desirable. Previous research experience is also required.
The ideal candidate will demonstrate interest in interdisciplinary research, strong motivation, work
ethic, and organizational and communication skills.
The successful candidate will be expected to work on a BMBF-funded sequential mixed methods research project entitled “RESPOND! Nein zu Judenhass im Netz! Entwicklung, Implementierung und Evaluierung eines Multiplikatorentrainings zur Bekämpfung antisemitischer Hassrede auf den sozialen Medien junger Menschen – ein Verbundprojekt“. This project is led by Touro College Berlin, in collaboration with FH Bielefeld, the University of Potsdam, and the Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin.
Requirements: Successful completion of a PhD in Psychology, specifically Media Psychology,
Multi-/Cross-Cultural Psychology or a related field. Strong skills in qualitative and quantitative
research methods as well as statistical analyses. Strong intercultural communication skills. Fluency
in English and German spoken and written language.
To Apply: Please send a cover letter, transcript and degree documents, contact information for
references, and CV as a single pdf file to Prof. Dr. Özen Odağ at oezen.odag@touroberlin.de.
Application deadline: June 27th, 2021
Research Fellow, Australian National University
GIWL ANU seeks to recruit a Research Fellow to take part in research of international standing. A Level B academic (research intensive) is expected to carry out collaborative and independent research aligned with GIWL’s strategic priorities and to carry out activities to develop their research expertise relevant to the respective field of research. A Level B academic is expected to make an independent contribution through professional practice and expertise. The Research Fellow will work collaboratively as part of a small team and report to the Director of GIWL. This is an outstanding opportunity to work with world-leading expert Professor Michelle Ryan for an Institute that aims to create a world where being a woman is not a barrier to becoming a leader in any field.
We are recruiting an early career Research Fellow to partner with existing Institute for Lifecourse Development (ILD) Centres, and develop their research career with us. The successful candidate will be appointed for a period of two years. The Centre for Inequalities specifically focuses on exploring, understanding and reducing inequalities across various domains (for example, in education, health, the community, and the workplace). The successful applicant will work with existing staff in the Centre for Inequalities to build on the interdisciplinary expertise in the Faculty, particularly within the disciplines of Psychology, Health, Social Care, and Education. We are specifically looking for researchers whose interests and expertise lie in areas relevant to inequalities, and who would work closely with experienced colleagues in the Centre for Inequalities as well as other Centres within the Institute.
Assistant Professor in Social Psychology, Maastricht University
We are looking for a candidate who is interested in building a teaching and research career following their postdoctoral training. The candidate should be motivated to develop and execute a research line at the forefront of health and social psychological research making use of currently developing themes and methodological approaches. An interest in learning or further developing innovative methods for conducting health and social psychological research is an advantage. We are open to a broad range of health and social psychological research topics. Ideally, the candidate’s research focus has potential to intersect the research lines held by staff members in our department (please see our website for themes and topics), and actively seeking collaborations. A start-up grant for research will be offered.
Lecturer in Psychology, Queen's University Belfast
The School of Psychology is seeking to appoint a Lecturer to undertake research and teaching in the area of the psychology of diversity and inclusion, broadly defined (e.g., research on the causes or consequences of discrimination, stereotyping, prejudice, inclusivity interventions, minority group identity, intergroup relations). The Lecturer will be joining a thriving research environment with excellent facilities, technical support, and senior research mentors. We are seeking to appoint a Lecturer who will complement existing research in Social Psychology, including work done within the Centre for Identity and Intergroup Relations (CIIR) led by Professor Rhiannon Turner. Researchers associated with CIIR carry out research on the role of identity in explaining attitudes and behaviour and examine intergroup relations in a variety of contexts both within and beyond Northern Ireland. Current topics of investigation include gender, ethnic and community identity, cultural diversity, immigration and integration, educational success and political participation of minorities, peace building among children and young people in divided and contested societies, interventions to promote positive intergroup relations, and promoting gender equality among STEM academics.
We are a team of researchers at the University of Queensland conducting a meta-analysis on several motives or factors that may influence charitable giving; specifically:
• Audience: the (implied or actual) presence of observers
• Efficacy: perceptions of the impact or efficacy of donations
• Efficiency: information about a charity’s efficiency ratios or spending on overheads
• Emotions: discrete emotions or generalised positive or negative emotion
• Empathy: empathy, compassion, and sympathy
• Identity: personal or social identities and group memberships
• Incentives: gifts, rebates, tax breaks, and other incentives
• Neediness: perceptions of the scale or intensity of need
• Norms: perceptions of what other people approve of or do
• Solicitation: being asked directly for donations
• Trust: degree of trust in people in general, institutions, charities, or the organisation
• Warm glow: emotional rewards for giving
Having completed our review of the published literature, we are now seeking to incorporate unpublished data.
Please contact us if you have unpublished data that includes both a measure of any of the above motives AND a measure of charitable giving (donations of money), for example:
• Self-reported past giving
• Giving intentions, willingness to give, or hypothetical donations
• Archived giving behaviour
• Behavioural measures of giving
If you have data that fit the above criteria, or if you have any questions about inclusion, please email Jessica Spence (j.spence@uq.edu.au).
Thank you in advance,
Cassandra Chapman, Jessica Spence, Matthew Hornsey, and Lucas Dixon
Call for data: Meta-analysis on the relationships between conspiracy beliefs and pandemic-related health attitudes, behaviors and intentions
We are conducting a meta-analysis on the relationships between conspiracy beliefs and pandemic-related health attitudes, behaviors and intentions. We are interested in published data, unpublished data, and data that are currently under review/in press.
To meet our inclusion criteria, the study needs to:
1. Be quantitative (cross-sectional, experimental, longitudinal) and conducted within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic;
2. Include a measure of conspiracy beliefs;
3. Include a measure of prevention behaviors and/or attitudes toward pandemic-related health attitudes, behaviors and intentions, including but not limited to: social distancing, mask wearing, vaccination, adherence to other COVID-19 regulations;
4. A statistic expressing the association of conspiracy beliefs with prevention behaviors and/or attitudes toward prevention behaviors (e.g., correlation coefficient).
If you have any (un)published work that might be relevant, we would very much appreciate if you could send it to k.m.bierwiaczonek@psykologi.uio.no so we can include it in our meta-analysis. In the case of unpublished data, we will be grateful for correlation matrices with relevant correlations along with a brief description of the sample (sample type, average age, % of male participants, education, socioeconomic status, date and country of data collection), as well as datasets with relevant variables.
Thank you for your time and consideration!
Kinga Bierwiaczonek, Jonas R. Kunst & Aleksander Gundersen
Department of Psychology
University of Oslo
Special Issue: Current issues on police behavior: antecedents and consequences
Guest editors: Catia P. Teixeira (University of Groningen), Maja Kutlaca (University of Durham) and Andrew Livingstone (University of Exeter)
In this special issue we are interested in psychological research examining antecedents and consequences of behavior by law enforcement.
Consequences of these behaviors (e.g., how they affect targets, relationships between law enforcement and communities, political attitudes or social change behaviors and/or attitudes towards alternative law enforcement policies).
Interventions aimed at changing behaviors by or towards police.
The next ISPPNews will be published in July 2021.
To submit your contributions for ISPPNews please send an email to the ISPP Central Office.
Benefits of your ISPP Membership
Six issues per year of the journal Political Psychology; online access to the journal of Political Psychology and Advances in Political Psychology; issues of ISPPNews; ISPP's Teacher's Corner; reduced registration fees at ISPP's Annual Scientific Meetings; discount on selected publications; access to ISPP's Members-only Portal; access to the online member directory; voting rights for ISPP leadership
Your ideas for further improvements or additions to ISPPNews are welcome! Please let us know what you would like to see here in the future by sending us an email.
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