Recently I read Wilfred Bion’s 1967 epistemological reflections ‘Notes on Memory and Desire’ where he calls for the ‘steady exclusion of memory and desire’ from listening during the psychoanalytic session. While the abandonment or suspension of memory and desire as a ‘technique in practice’ is under debate, this short paper got me thinking about how these two key concepts, memory and desire, determine our orientations towards our political psychology field.
In July 2022, we will be meeting for our annual conference in Athens, an event that brings so many happy memories and sparks our desire to meet again with colleagues and dear friends in a setting that we all find familiar, welcoming and enriching. Every year, we have come together, in-person or virtually, to share our research insights, present our work, meet our mentors and our mentees, exchange ideas and learn from each other. Every year, together, we have been engaging in this exercise, with memory and desire, and Athens 2022 will give us again this much welcomed opportunity.
Our program will also celebrate memories. In commemorating roundtables, we will honour the life and contributions of Jim Sidanius, Jerry Post, Bob Jervis, Cheryl Koopman, Emile Bruneau, and Martin Heisler. These wonderful colleagues who are no longer with us, have served ISPP generously over decades and have shaped our field with their academic contributions and inspiring mentorship. We will celebrate their legacy and the knowledge they have gifted us with.
Remembering what the past taught us helps us understand what is going on today and equips us to examine the future. Our Athens 2022 theme ‘Democracy as an Achievement’ takes a close look at how we engage with Democracy through intrapersonal, interpersonal and socio-political processes and practices. Our program hosts three thought-provoking keynote presentations delivered by Nicolas Demertzis, Professor at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and Director of the National Centre for Social Research (EKKE) in Greece; Noëlle McAfee, professor of philosophy at Emory University with a secondary appointment as professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences; and Paul Nesbitt Larking, Professor Emeritus at Huron University College (Canada) and former President of our society. These talks will test our receptiveness to novel ideas, and bring to the fore the importance of being open to what is new. For more information on our keynotes, see Annual Meetings - ISPP.
But what Bion suggests has value too. Reflecting on our memories and desires makes us aware of how our academic preconceptions and our theoretical and empirical expectations can constrain our observations. Suspending, even temporarily, our convictions can bring important gains by allowing us to put aside our theories and think in new ways. Our multidisciplinary conference, put together by our brilliant and truly global team of 25 section co-chairs and two conference chairs, offers a fertile environment to practice overcoming our resistance to the unfamiliar. The program hosts a rich and diverse set of papers and panels with a multitude of theoretical and empirical perspectives. This content invites us to link to insights that reach across the borders of our disciplines and create something new.
So join me in a few months in Athens 2022, and bring along your memories and desires. We will engage in the pursuit of knowledge and scientific inquiry, honour colleagues that are no longer with us, find value in what is new, try the unfamiliar, and create thoughts we can think with others, as we develop our minds in political psychology.
Tereza Capelos
ISPP President
Save the dates! ISPP's upcoming meetings
Our 2022 Annual Meeting is planned to be held 14-17 July 2022 in Athens, Greece.
Our 2023 Annual Meeting is planned to be held 9-11 July 2023 in Montréal, Québec, Canada.
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.
We are currently collecting donations in order to be able to reopen the emergency fund.
Lecturer in Social Psychology, University of St. Andrews
We are seeking to appoint a lecturer in Social Psychology in the School of Psychology & Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews. We are particularly interested in candidates with a research focus on group processes and a strong interest in exploring how group processes relate to, and can help address, global challenges associated with public health, climate change and forced migration. This is a permanent appointment, with a start date of 4 April 2022, or as soon as possible thereafter. Candidates should hold a PhD in a cognate discipline and have a clear track record of excellence in research and teaching. The successful candidate will be expected to establish a world-leading research group with links to other researchers across our School’s four major research themes (please see here). They will also contribute to the development and delivery of teaching at all levels and fulfill administrative roles within and beyond the School of Psychology & Neuroscience.
Applications are particularly welcome from women, people from the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) community, and other protected characteristics who are under-represented in academic posts at the University.
Assistant Professor in Psychology, University College Dublin
Applications are invited for a specified purpose and temporary post of a Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Psychology within School of Psychology.
Applications are invited for two temporary appointments as Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Psychology at the UCD School of Psychology. Post 1 is estimated as a 9-month post, replacing a permanent member of the School whilst on leave. Post 2 is a new four-year post in the School. In addition, this process will be used to create a panel from which subsequent appointments made be made in the next six months.
Applicants must have a PhD or Doctorate in psychology, as well as teaching and research experience relevant to the School’s current research theme of Group Processes and Social Inclusion. The School is committed to research-led education, so the candidate will be expected to conduct research that supports high quality teaching in their field, and to lead innovations in both research and teaching directions. Successful applicants will contribute to the School’s graduate and undergraduate programmes, and to research activity within the School.
Postdoctoral Researcher SNSF in Social/Political Psychology, University of Lausanne
The Institute of Psychology of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Lausanne is seeking to appoint a Postdoctoral Researcher SNSF in the project “REsilience and SOlidarity in intercultural encounters between displaced migrants and host society members: An ego-centered NETwork approach” (RESONET). The RESONET project is a collaborative research project funded by the European network WEAVE «Research Funding Without Borders» (SNSF, FNRS, FWO) led by:
Prof. Eva G.T. Green (Université de Lausanne)
Prof. Karen Phalet (KU Leuven) and Dr. Emanuele Politi (KU Leuven)
Prof. Laurent Licata and Prof. Antoine Roblain (Université Libre de Bruxelles).
Research Associate in the Political/Social Psychology of China and the World, University of Manchester
The Manchester China Institute (MCI) seeks to appoint a two-year Research Associate in the Political/Social Psychology of China and the World, commencing September 2022.
You will be based in the Lee Kai Hung Postdoctoral College at MCI, and work independently and in small teams under the supervision of the MCI director. You will possess a PhD or equivalent in politics or psychology, and have the ability to produce world-class research. Knowledge of Chinese and China is desired but not required. Slight preference will be given to research that can demonstrate impact beyond academia.
PhD Stipend in the Program: "Global Inequality, the Middle Classes, and the Welfare State," Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences
The Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS) invites applications for 2
stipends for international doctoral researchers in its new Graduate School Scholarship Program
(GSSP), "Global Inequality, the Middle Classes, and the Welfare State" (GloWel), funded by the
German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). BIGSSS is an international inter-university graduate
school in the social sciences, located at the University of Bremen and Jacobs University Bremen,
Germany. Successful applicants will receive a Ph.D. stipend from the DAAD of 1.200 €/month (plus
additional benefits) for 48 months.
PhD Position in the Project "Racialisation, racism and its impact on health," Nottingham Trent University
This PhD project will focus on the changing nature of racism within multicultural communities in the UK, and offer strategies that will create solutions for sustainable societies. The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the precariousness of the lives of individuals and communities within UK and worldwide, painfully highlighting how different identity positions (based on gender, class, and race for example) influence access to healthcare and people’s exposure to injury, violence, and death. Despite the recent increase in reported incidents of racism in the UK, scholars have argued that racism is still insufficiently theorised and current strategies focused on inclusion and justice fall short on delivering equity and safety for marginalised peoples. Instead of critiquing the dehumanising structures of racism (de Noronha, 2021), scholarly work on everyday multiculture is descriptive in nature (Valluvan, 2016) and psychological research on racism often focuses solely on individual prejudice reduction or tolerance (Malherbe et al., 2021).
Call for papers: Psychology and the Climate Emergency – South African Journal of Psychology (SAJP)
The special issue welcomes manuscripts related to: psychological impacts of climate change;
experiences of climate-exacerbated disasters; risk perceptions; resilience and adaptation;
engaging governments, extractive and fossil fuel industries; public education and curriculum
development; evaluating novel interventions; clinical case studies (intervention, group or
community); community mobilisation; ethical case studies (e.g., engaging with statutory bodies);
climate activism; climate anxiety; at-risk populations; psychologies’ roles in supporting climate
action; climate inequities and mental health.
We look forward to receiving appropriate manuscripts, which should be emailed to sajp@psyssa.co.za, indicating that they are for the “Special Issue on Psychology and the Climate Emergency”. Contact the Lead Guest Editor with a query beforehand for the attention of Dr Garret Barnwell.
Call for Submissions for the 3rd Scientific Meeting of the German Political Psychology Network in Chemnitz (26-28 January, 2022)
We invite you to the third meeting of the German Political Psychology Network, to be held as a hybrid meeting on March 10th (afternoon) and March 11th (morning) 2022. This meeting is being organized by a group of researchers from the Chemnitz University of Technology. There will be no participation fee. The conference will take place in hybrid format: presentation sessions will be conducted either in person at Chemnitz University of Technology or online via Zoom; poster sessions will be conducted fully online via GatherTown. Please note that due to COVID safety considerations, some participants may be asked to present online rather than in person.
The next ISPPNews will be published in February 2022.
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.
ISPP
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