I hope the 2021-2022 academic year finds you safe and well and having enjoyed a restful summer. This month, many of us return to our university offices, deliver face-to-face teaching, attend conferences and research meetings, and we engage in a “new normal” that comes with blended learning and new practices. No doubt, this is a transitional time for most of us, and we approach it with enthusiasm and caution.
As we look back, it is important to recognize that the past year has posed challenges related to professional responsibilities, mental health and well-being. These many months of disruption and social isolation invited us to calibrate priorities, and take on new challenges, some of which we had not anticipated. During this unprecedented time, our ISPP interdisciplinary society connected us, supported us, and inspired us in our next steps.
As we look ahead, I want to share with you some exciting news and keep you updated of developments regarding our society. First, I would like to congratulate our newly elected Governing Council members. We are honoured and excited to have you on-board. Thank you for your passion in supporting ISPP and promoting the study of political psychology. I would also like to acknowledge the commitment and effort of our outgoing GC members. A big thank you for sharing your time and ideas with ISPP. We recognise and value your contribution to making our society stronger and better.
Our number one priority at ISPP is to promote political psychology scholarship around the world, and we support this aim with a wide range of related initiatives. Our annual meeting offers every year a stimulating interdisciplinary space to engage in presentations, discussions, networking and potential collaborations. We were heartened this summer to receive so much positive feedback about our 2021 virtual conference. While the format was the result of necessity due to travel restrictions, the past two years opened opportunities for us to think creatively how to bring together our ISPP community and share our research. The theme for our 2022 meeting is ”Democracy as an Achievement: Recognizing Tensions, Challenges, and Aspirations through Political Psychology.” Our destination of choice is Athens, Greece, one of the world’s oldest cities, with rich heritage, histories and cultures spanning 3,400 years, which is also my hometown. Our conference chairs, Stavroula Chrona and Alex Theodoridis, are planning an exciting program with inspiring keynote talks, stimulating paper panels, exciting workshops, and thought-provoking roundtables, which provide dialectical accounts on diverse methods and perspectives. Please join us in Athens on July 14-17 2022! Our conference hub will open soon.
Teaching political psychology around the world has been supported since 2011 through the ISPP Academy, our political psychology training programme. The Academy responds to professionalization challenges and pressures by offering innovative training delivered by leading scholars in the field. Unfazed by pandemic challenges, the Academy was delivered virtually the past two years. In 2022, the ISPP Academy returns to face-to-face delivery under the directorship of Gizem Arikan and will be hosted in Athens prior to our annual meeting. Stay tuned for the call for fellows and its program.
Our forward vision at ISPP is also delivered through the publication of our two leading journals in the field. Political Psychology and Advances in Political Psychology broaden disciplinary horizons and push the boundaries of our knowledge with cutting-edge publications. Our Political Psychology Editors in Chief, Orla Muldoon and James Liu, and our Advances Co-Editors: Steve Nicholson and Efren Perez, deserve immense credit for the journal’s rising impact factor of 4.33.
I am very excited to inform you of the creation of our ISPP Youtube channel, which will host interviews on hot topics in political psychology as well as recorded workshops and research talks. We are also putting together a Lecture Bank that will contain short lectures on important disciplinary debates and topics. We will be sharing updates on these initiatives with you soon.
In our increasingly globalized world, ISPP prioritizes internationalization, interconnection and diversity. Our ISPP committees support these values by improving our communications, strengthening our finances, engaging in long term planning, promoting diversity, organizing conferences and events, and celebrating excellence through our awards and nominations. They are joined by our tireless Early Career Committee (ECC), which organizes our mentorship program, maintains our ECC newsletter, and publishes our ECC blog. I am grateful for their valuable work. Together they help us demonstrate with actions that ISPP is an adaptive and caring society: it listens to the needs of our membership, it supports scholars under threat and political prosecution, and it builds international bridges. I call on our members to support us in reaching these goals, and invite you to contact us with your suggestions if you think there is more we can do.
In our ever-changing environment, we also remain alert for challenges and tensions. The complex economic strains around the world have compromised funding resources for many academic institutions. As travel budgets get tightened or even eliminated, creative solutions on how to support our members to attend our events are imperative. The past two years we offered virtual conferences with low registration fees and we maintain the commitment to be mindful of the income inequalities and capacities in our membership. We are also developing long-term financial sustainability plans, and we remain alert to changes in the business practices that shape our professional engagements.
As norms and expectations of professional conduct grow and evolve, ISPP supports its members by ensuring our platforms and activities reflect and respect the values of our multicultural and diverse community. ISPP is committed to maintaining a safe and respectful professional environment and requires explicitly the highest standard of behaviour from its elected and appointed officers and its members. We are updating our code of conduct to signal our commitment to a welcoming, open and safe environment that does not tolerate harassment or unprofessional behaviour at our events or any other ISPP related interactions.
Our ISPP community is supported by our Central Office professional staff. I would like to recognise the professionalism and service of our ISPP Executive Director, Sev Bennett, in helping ISPP achieve its aims. I hugely appreciate her hard work and dedication. A special thanks goes to Heather Schlabach, who leaves her ISPP Executive Administrator role in a few weeks to pursue an exciting new career path. We are very happy and proud of her, and wish her the best of success.
Taking stock of what is just the third month of my presidency, more than ever, I am proud and honoured to call ISPP my home. I joined the Society during my first years of graduate school, attended its conferences, benefited from the mentorship of generous colleagues, served as conference programme chair, as conference section chair, as member of its Governing Council, as member of its committees as its Vice President, and now as President. Year after year, I am amazed by the dedication and enthusiasm of my ISPP colleagues to better our society.
Knowing how much we have achieved and what we are planning, I am very excited for the year ahead. I look forward to all of us getting together in Athens in July 2022 where we can celebrate political psychology and see each other again.
Thank you for your continued support.
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. Here is the call for papers ISPP Annual Conference (the submission deadline is 1 December 2021).
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.
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.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Organisational Behaviour, The University of Queensland Business School
You should possess or be near completion of a PhD in management, organisational behaviour, organisational psychology, social psychology or a related discipline. You should have demonstrated experience in conducting and analysing quantitative research, including advanced analytic techniques. A strong ethic of project delivery and evidence of research activity and publications in high quality journals (relative to opportunity) is essential to the role.
To discuss this role please contact Professor Tyler Okimoto, Deputy Head of School (School of Business).
The Department of Political Science, Aarhus BSS, Aarhus University, invites applications for a postdoctoral position offering applicants the opportunity to join the research project “Exemplar Democracy (EXDEM) – Psychological Biases and the Impact of Exemplars on Factual Perceptions and Attributions of Government Responsibility”. The project is led by Associate Professor Lene Aarøe and funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark.
The postdoctoral position is a full-time fixed-term position for 2.5 years starting on 1 March 2022 or as soon as possible hereafter subject to mutual agreement.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
The Chinese University of Hong Kong seeks applicants for a Postdoctoral Fellow position. Applicants should have received a PhD degree in Psychology or other social sciences disciplines within the last 5 years. The postdoctoral fellow will be supervised by Professor Ying-yi Hong to investigate the interplay between culture, social identity, and intergroup relations in the context of political transitions. Job responsibilities include formulating research projects, designing experiments and surveys, and writing up publications. Applicants with strong communication skills, knowledge in DirectRT or E-prime, and statistical analysis are preferred. Information about the research and lab activity is available at Culture Lab website.
We offer a competitive package, access to excellent research facilities and an interdisciplinary research program. The start date of the position will be in 2022. The initial contract is one year with a possibility of extension.
Interested applicants should send CV, along with samples of research papers to Ms. Connie Chiu. Review of candidates will start in October 2021 and continue until the position is filled.
Assistant Professor Organizational Studies and Psychology, University of Michigan
The Interdisciplinary Program in Organizational Studies and the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan solicit applications for a tenure track assistant professorship to begin August 29, 2022. We seek scholars who bring a psychological perspective to the study of organizations and organizational behavior in both their research and teaching. The area of research is open, and may include attitudes and persuasion, culture, diversity, emotion, evolution, group and intergroup processes, interpersonal relations, judgment and decision making, leadership, morality and ethical behavior, motivation, social justice, and stress and wellbeing.
Call for papers: ISPP Annual Conference, 14-17 July, 2022
The theme of the 2022 Scientific meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP) is ”Democracy as an Achievement: Recognizing Tensions, Challenges, and Aspirations through Political Psychology.” Our destination of choice is Athens, Greece, one of the world’s oldest cities, with rich heritage, histories and cultures spanning 3,400 years, the birthplace of democracy, and now a cosmopolitan metropolis that is the southernmost capital of Europe.
Call for papers: The role of territory in group conflicts and solidarity
Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology is seeking manuscript submissions for a special issue coedited by Borja Martinović, Utrecht University, the Netherlands; Ana Figueiredo, Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, Chile; and Sabina Toruńczyk-Ruiz, University of Warsaw, Poland.
Important dates
Letter of intent due: October 15, 2021
Authors informed of outcome of initial review by the editors: November 15, 2021
Potential contributors will submit completed manuscripts: June 1, 2022
The next ISPPNews will be published in November 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.
ISPP
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