2024 CONFERENCE: The 2024 Annual Meeting in Santiago, Chile was ISPP’s first time in South America, and it was an unquestionable success. We had 480 registrants representing 50 different countries, presenting in 122 total sessions. The 2024 Award Winners, presented their awards during the conference, are featured on the ISPP web site. You can find the program booklet PDF from the conference in the Past Meetings section of the web site.
2024 ISPP VIRTUAL ACADEMY: On December 6, 2024 ISPP will hold an all-virtual ISPP Academy, separate from the Annual Meeting. This format will allow access for those who have barriers to attending the in-person Academy held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting each year. The application process for the all-virtual Academy is NOW OPEN; the deadline is October 1, 2024. More information can be found on the ISPP web site.
2025 CONFERENCE: We now turn our attention to the next conference, in Prague, Czech Republic, to be held at the Prague University of Economics. Please note that there has been a slight shift in the event dates from those anticipated at the time of the 2024 Annual Meeting; the ISPP Academy will now be held June 30-July 2, 2025, and the main conference will be four days: July 3-6, 2025 (inclusive). We anticipate opening the submission process for this conference in late September/early October 2024, so please watch for an e-mail announcement around that time. The submission deadline is December 1, 2024. There will not be virtual presentations for the 2025 Annual Meeting.
HOTEL: As we will be meeting at a university, at present, ISPP does not have a block of rooms secured at any hotel(s) for 2025. Each attendee should plan to make their own arrangements for lodging, and make them early, as Prague is very busy during the summer months. There are a number of lodging options not far from the conference venue; there is a list provided for your convenience on the ISPP web site.
FUTURE CONFERENCE LOCATIONS: Would your university (and city) be a great place to hold ISPP’s Annual Meeting? Let us know! ISPP is taking suggestions for future (2028 and beyond) conference locations and venues. Please send the ISPP Central Office the contact information for your university’s conference office/coordinator so that we can get in touch and see what might be possible to bring ISPP to your campus!
YOUTUBE: The ISPP YouTube Channel is populated with some content, and we are continuing to add more! You can check it out HERE. Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel – it’s FREE!
ANNOUNCEMENTS: ISPP has split its Announcements pages on our web site to make it easier to find content. Check out ISPP Announcements for all things ISPP; Other Announcements for things that may be of interest to our members, but are not directly related to ISPP; Job Opportunities for current political psychology-related job postings around the globe; and Volunteer Opportunities for any such opportunities related to political psychology. Check back regularly!
QUESTIONS: As always, if you have any questions or concerns regarding your ISPP membership or ISPP benefits or events, please feel free to contact the ISPP Central Office.
Our 2026 Annual Meeting is expected to be held at Newcastle University in Newcastle upon Tyne in the United Kingdom.
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 protecting its members whose academic freedom is at risk anywhere in the world due to the political context where they work or live. ISPP's Scholars Under Threat (SUT) Committee has been working to support ISPP's members at risk. Academic freedom as it relates to both research and teaching is absolutely essential for the advancement of scientific knowledge. The SUT can support academics by providing free membership to ISPP, access to emergency funds for scholars under threat to continue their livelihoods, and access to the ISPP twinning scheme for academics who wish to have mentorship or support from colleagues in less risky contexts. If you or someone you know has had their academic freedom put at risk and feel that you would benefit from ISPP support, please contact us.
ISPP is seeking a new Editor of ISPPNews, for a three-year term from July 2025 – June 2028, with the transition from the current Editor starting in February 2025. The Newsletter Editor works closely with the Executive Director of ISPP and the President of ISPP to compile each issue of ISPPNews. In addition to this regular, ongoing task, the Newsletter Editor works on various other tasks pertaining to the society’s communication goals as needed.
If you are interested in this position, please submit your application to info@ispp.org as soon as possible, including your CV and a letter describing your motivation, experience, and ability to commit time to this position, as well as ideas for diversity and inclusion related to ISPP's communications. If you have any questions about the role, feel free to reach out to one of us at the emails below.
Sincerely,
The ISPP Newsletter Editor Search Committee: Elaine Smith, current ISPP Newsletter Editor, University of Limerick, elaine.smith@ul.ie
Allison Harell, Université du Québec a Montréal, harell.allison@uqam.ca
Pierce Ekstrom, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, pierce.ekstrom@unl.edu
Call for jobs & fellowships
Post Doctoral Researcher in Social Psychology – University of Limerick, Ireland
The University of Limerick is recruiting a post-doctoral researcher to join the project ID-COMPRESSION, funded by the European Research Council, led by Prof. Mike Quayle.
Starting in January 2025, this project will develop and test a framework for understanding how identity is “written in” to social information via social interaction; how this reduces complexity; and thus, social information (like attitudes) become a substrate for identity. This is closely related to familiar social psychology topics explaining how people generate simplified representations of the world — like categorization, stereotyping, heuristics etc. — but is more basic, and provides a fundamental explanation for the social process of simplification and its social functions. The framework treats social interaction as a form of computation, with compressible identity-laden information as a product.
The project will have an applied maths/network science/information team working closely with a social science team to develop a novel take on social processes. Prof. Quayle is also recruiting a Post Doctoral Researcher in Applied Mathematical Modelling and Computational Methods for this project. Informal enquiries regarding the post may be directed to mike.quayle@ul.ie
Associate or Assistant Professor of Social Psychology - University of Luxembourg
The Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences within the Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Science at the University of Luxembourg is seeking a leading academic to join its team as Associate Professor or Assistant Professor (tenure track) of Social Psychology.
The holder of the position will conduct research and teaching in Social Psychology, with a focus on the social psychology of decision making.
The holder will have expertise in decision making, preferably in (but not limited to) the domain of health/medical decision making, or decision making with relevance for sustainable and climate-friendly behavior, or political decision making, addressing phenomena like polarization of society, false information, or conspiracy.
The holder will also have:
expertise in experimental social psychology
mentoring and management experience
interdisciplinary orientation
experience with public outreach
visibility in the scientific community
dedication to the principles of transparent and open science
Teaching areas:
The holder of the position will teach Social Psychology in the Bachelor in Psychology programme, and contribute to teaching in the Master programmes in psychology as well as in the Psychology Track of the Doctoral School.
The holder will also teach classes on experimental and/or statistical methodology at the Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral level.
Your profile
PhD. in Psychology (with specialization in Social Psychology or related fields)
a minimum of three years of post-doctoral experience acquired in a university or comparable research centre or equivalent
an appropriate international research profile as evidenced by peer-reviewed publications, conference participation, and collaboration in international research initiatives
demonstrated capability to attract competitive third-party research funding
university-level teaching experience at the undergraduate and the postgraduate level
Language requirements:
The University of Luxembourg is set in a multilingual context. The person hired on this position must be proficient in English and either French or German. The University encourages its staff to learn the other language and provides access to language courses to this end.
Postdoctoral Researcher in Social Sciences - University of Luxembourg
The University of Luxembourg is seeking a postdoctoral researcher. The successful candidate will become a member of the Luxembourg team of the "Health Behaviour in School-aged Children - HBSC" network (www.hbsc.lu). The HBSC network is an international cooperation of researchers that collaborate on the cross-national survey of school-aged children (www.hbsc.org). HBSC collects survey data every four years on adolescents' health and well-being, social environments and health behaviours. The aim of the project is to understand young people's health in their social context. The data collected is analysed both at the national level and at the international level.
The HBSC Luxembourg country team is situated at the Centre for Childhood and Youth Research (CCY) within the Department of Social Sciences. The CCY comprises a multidisciplinary research team that examines the conditions and opportunity structures of growing up against the backdrop of social change and inequalities. It maintains strong links to other institutes and relevant organizations within and beyond the department, both nationally and internationally.
Tasks
Contribute to the preparation of the Luxembourgish HBSC 2026 survey
Contribute to the quantitative analysis of the Luxembourgish HBSC 2026 data
Contribute to the National Report 2026/2027
Conduct and publish research in the area of public health and/or social scientific health research using HBSC data
Engage in policy-relevant analyses and dissemination of results to stakeholders (e.g., via policy briefs)
Participate in and present at relevant national and international conferences
Contribute to reports, an online data dashboard, and research publications
Your profile
Excellent Master or Ph.D. degree in sociology, psychology, public health, or another relevant field
A high level of experience in quantitative data analysis
Fluent written and spoken languages skills: English and French or German. Knowledge of Luxembourgish would be a plus
Ability to work autonomously
Willingness to engage in teamwork in research groups
Application deadline: 30 September 2024 | More informationPhD position in experimental social psychology (Stereotypes and Generics) - KU Leuven, Belgium
The Laboratory of Experimental Social Psychology (LESP) of KU Leuven is offering a PhD position to work on the project “Are old folks wise, or are they wiser than youngsters? How the wording of claims about social groups spreads stereotypes”, funded by FWO (grant number G053623N).
People’s views of social groups (e.g. age, gender, professional, religious and ethnic groups) do not only manifest themselves in what they say or write about those groups, but also in how they express it. With most readers and listeners paying more attention to the contents than to the wording of verbal communication, the wording can imperceptibly affect how readers and listeners think about the described group(s). An important but as yet understudied aspect of the wording of claims about social groups is their ‘comparative format’ – the extent to, and the manner in which claims explicitly state that an intergroup comparison is being involved. This project examines determinants of the comparative formats that communicators use and the extent to which comparative formats shape the interpretation of claims by readers and listeners. It also examines to what extent and in which manner both processes jointly contribute to the spreading of stereotypes. The project will test hypotheses derived from theories and findings from social and cognitive psychology, linguistics, and philosophy. As a predoctoral researcher, you will play a major role in preparing and conducting the experiments, analyzing and interpreting the data, publishing the research, and disseminating the results to a wider audience. You will participate in the weekly lab meetings of the LESP, as well as in seminars within and outside the research group, and in regular online meetings with Susanne Bruckmüller.
LESP belongs to the Research Group Brain & Cognition (B&C) in the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of KU Leuven. Led by Prof. Vera Hoorens, LESP will from Fall 2024 on consist of 4 doctoral students, 1 research intern, and 8-10 master thesis students, all supported by two managerial assistants (part-time working for LESP), and the faculty’s ICT service. It is a vivid, cohesive, and productive research group, strongly committed to fostering collaborations, Responsible Research Practices, and FAIR and Open Science.
As a PhD student, you will be enrolled in the doctoral program of the faculty. You will devote nearly all your time to your doctoral research and the doctoral training program, with minimal teaching and administrative tasks. Your supervisors and main advisors will be Prof. Vera Hoorens (LESP), Prof. Walter Schaeken, and Prof. Susanne Bruckmüller, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany). The philosopher of language Prof. Filip Buekens from the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science (KU Leuven) may be involved in a consulting role.
Application deadline: 31 October 2024 | More informationAssistant Professor - Social, Personality, and Health Psychology - University of Houston, USA
The Department of Psychology at the University of Houston (UH) anticipates filling a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in its Social, Personality, and Health Psychology Program to begin September 1, 2025.
Successful candidates must have a strong program of research as well as the ability to contribute to our undergraduate and graduate teaching goals. Individuals with a history of and commitment to mentoring students are encouraged to apply. Candidates are expected to establish research programs with strong potential for external funding. Candidates with lines of research in any area of social psychology, including health, personality, and quantitative methods/measurement are encouraged to apply. Teaching duties will include undergraduate and graduate courses as well as Ph.D. research supervision.
Applications may be submitted at https://uh.edu/provost/faculty/faculty-resources/prospective-faculty (Posting FAC003488) and should include a letter of interest, a current curriculum vita, research statement, representative papers, teaching statement, evidence of excellence in teaching, and the names and email addresses of three writers of letters of recommendation (referees will be contacted via the online system to submit letters directly). Any questions may be addressed to Dr. Clayton Neighbors, Social, Personality, and Health Psychology Faculty Search Committee Chair, Professor of Psychology, Phone: 713-743-2616, E-mail: cneighbors@uh.edu.
Review of candidates for the position will begin October 7, 2024 and will continue until the position is filled.
Qualifications:
A doctorate in the discipline is required.
Applicants should demonstrate a clear commitment to excellence in the supervision of graduate research, and teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels.
Call for Papers - Memory Studies Association 9th Annual Conference “Beyond Crisis”
The Memory Studies Association invites proposals for its ninth annual conference, to be held from 14 to 18 July 2025 at Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences in the historic city of Prague. This on-site conference aims to carry over from earlier conferences a transdisciplinary conversation on memory and its social, cultural and public relevance. It welcomes scholars, practitioners, and activists from diverse fields to contribute to this vibrant exchange of ideas.
With the theme Beyond Crises: Resilience and (In)stability, the conference seeks to explore how the memory of these events and other critical turning points has led to new tensions but also generated new possibilities. What patterns of decisive change can we observe? What is the role of memory in these processes, and how have they been commemorated? How have such critical turning points and their actors been collectively remembered and commemorated? And what can memory teach us amid the ongoing polycrisis?
Organized in the shadow of the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, the rise of populist and authoritarian tendencies all over the world, imminent climate collapse and humanitarian crises including ones in public health, Beyond Crises invites a multifaceted discussion on what memory scholars can learn from the memory of earlier crises and how that knowledge might be used to deal with ongoing political and social standoffs. Looking at shared and divided memoryscapes and the voices of marginalized communities, the conference will make a major contribution to the understanding of how societies remember and learn from crises.
The conference seeks to study, across different cultures and regions, the complex dynamics between remembering and forgetting, and between inclusion and exclusion, that take place in the aftermath of crisis. We will address instances where such memory constellations have led to dead-ends or backlashes; but also cases where they feed into an ongoing quest for justice, peace, and societal well-being. By focusing on themes such as hope, resilience, and reconciliation, we aim to understand how, and in which circumstances, communities and individuals can recover and rebuild after turmoil. The conference will investigate how the memory of earlier crises has inspired movements for change and social justice.
Call for papers for Special Issue on the development of political thought and action
Understanding how and when political attitudes and opinions develop is crucial for predicting future patterns of civic engagement and collective action, shaping effective educational interventions, and fostering a robust democracy built on informed and active citizenship (Sherrod et al., 2002). Arriving at such an understanding entails exploring the formation of political attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors throughout childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, as well as shedding light on the factors that shape youths’ understanding of civic responsibilities, political institutions, and their role as active participants in democratic societies.
After decades of relative silence, the field of political development is experiencing a revival, driven in part by contemporary changes in political culture and social structures. Three main themes inform this revival. One theme isthe conceptualization of youth as active agents of their own political development — a complement to the traditional view of youth as targets of political socialization (e.g., Stattin, 2024). A second theme explores the possibility that differences in political ideology emerge much earlier in life than previously thought (e.g., Guidetti, Carraro, & Castelli, 2021). In fact, the seeds of ideology can even be observed in young children, especially if ideology is conceived broadly in terms of individual differences in children’s preferences for the structure of their social world (e.g., Reifen-Tagar & Cimpian, 2022). The third theme centers on the rapidly changing contexts in which youth express their political interest and the ever-evolving forms that their political action takes, especially considering the interactive effects between individual characteristics and social contexts (e.g., Bennett, 2008).
This special issue aims to address contributions that deal with various aspects of social attitudes and issues related to political thought, political action, or their precursors. We welcome contributions that address the three themes above from a socio-psychological perspective; however, we welcome any contributions pertaining to the timing and mechanisms of the development of youths’ political thought and action, regardless of whether they fit these specific themes. Contributions may be reviews, meta-analyses, or empirical studies conducted using any of a range of research designs and methods (e.g., experimental, longitudinal, correlational methods). Possible topics include (but are not limited to) the following:
the influence of family, education, peers, media, and societal context on youths’ political attitudes and behaviors
the role of youths as active agents in their own political development
the study of ideology-based differences in youths and children
trajectories of development of political thought and action, and possible determinants
attitudes toward and ambitions for political leadership
the interplay between individual traits and social environments in predicting youths’ political outcomes
Authors should submit their contribution by November 17, 2024. Please submit your manuscript via the online platform https://submission.rivisteweb.it/index.php/ps, indicating in the cover letter that the submission is to be considered for the special issue “The development of political thought and action”.
It is important to consult the authors’ guidelines before submission, verifying compliance with APA standards. Questions about the special issue can be directed to Silvia Russo, silvia.russo@unito.it.
Editors: Luciana Carraro, Andrei Cimpian, Silvia Russo, Laura Taylor
Submission deadline: 17 November 2024 | More informationCall for Papers – Special Topic of Social Psychological Bulletin on the Role of Physical Threat in Social Phenomena
Research indicates that people preferentially attend, process, and respond to physically threatening stimuli relative to merely negative (or positive) stimuli. Threats to life and limb influence many social phenomena including prejudice, attitudes, emotion, morality, response to disease (e.g., COVID-19), phobias and psychopathology, and suicide. The goal of this special issue is to advance our understanding of the role of physical threat in social functioning. For example, what is special about physically threatening stimuli? How, or in what contexts, are they differentially responded to than other stimuli? In what ways do they uniquely impact behavior, cognition, and attitudes? We invite submissions from all areas of psychology and welcome both full length articles and short research reports.
Submissions will be evaluated based on the rigor of the methods and analyses, transparency and completeness of reporting, ethical soundness, quality of reasoning, clarity of presentation, calibration of conclusions to evidence, and the originality of the ideas presented.
Social Psychological Bulletin is a diamond open access journal. All accepted manuscripts will be published open access and will be free for authors and for readers.
If you need further information on the Special Topic, please feel free to contact the Guest Editors:
Call for Abstracts – EASP-CuPsyNet small group meeting in Nicosia, Cyprus
The Department of Psychology at the University of Cyprus is accepting abstract proposals by September 30th, 2024, for a small group meeting titled "European Network Meeting for Sociocultural Psychology" which is funded by the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP) and co-organised by the Cultural Psychology Doctoral Network (CuPsyNet) (https://www.unine.ch/cupsynet). The meeting will take place in Nicosia, Republic of Cyprus, between November 22-23rd, 2024. The small group meeting is open to both members of EASP and CuPsyNet.
The meeting aims to achieve several key objectives:
Facilitate the dissemination of new research within the field of sociocultural psychology
Promote dialogue and ideas’ exchange among researchers in the field, regardless of their level
Offer a platform for critical engagement with the role of sociocultural psychologists in today's society
Strengthen and expand the network of researchers interested in sociocultural psychology
With these aims in mind, junior and senior sociocultural psychologists will meet and exchange ideas through presentations and discussions around a variety of sociocultural-psychological topics as well as through structured discussions on methodology and the current development of alternative methodologies in social psychology. Thus, the open call for abstract submission is open to a variety of topics around social and cultural psychology.
The meeting will be dedicated to early-career researchers and PhD students who are in the process of conducting their research and designed primarily to foster connections among social and cultural psychologists. Participants are encouraged to submit abstracts for 15-minute presentations followed by 15-minute discussions. We welcome submissions from researchers at all career stages, particularly PhD students and early-career scholars.
We will let you know whether your abstract has been accepted by the first week of October 2024.
For inquiries or to express interest in participating, please contact:
Elisavet Panagiotou, PhD candidate, Department of Psychology, University of Cyprus, epanag04@ucy.ac.cy
Eleni Anastasiou, PhD candidate, Department of Psychology, University of Cyprus, eanast10@ucy.ac.cy
Best regards,
The organisers
Elisavet Panagiotou and Eleni Anastasiou
Dr Irini Kadianaki, Dr Maria Ioannou and Dr Charis Psaltis
Genetic Social Psychology Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Cyprus
Obituary for Dr. James Liu Edited version of announcement from Dr. Kirsty Ross, Acting Head of School of Psychology, on the passing of Dr. James Liu
It is with immense sadness that we note that Dr. James Liu, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Political Psychology, has passed away whilst in Indonesia to deliver a keynote speech to the International Association of Cross-cultural Psychology, as an invited keynote speaker.
James Liu was born in Taiwan as Liu Hou-fu. His parents emigrated to Taiwan following the civil war in China. They then emigrated to the United States where James grew up in a small town in the Midwest (Carbondale, Illinois). He received a PhD in psychology from UCLA in 1992, did a post-doc at Florida Atlantic University. His father, the late eminent neo-Confucian philosopher Shu-hsien Liu, referred to himself and his discipline as a “gypsy spirit”, and James shared this view. A naturalized citizen of two countries, James described himself as a Chinese-American-New Zealander and he was indeed a citizen of the world, able to see multiple perspectives and realities.
James was Professor in the School of Psychology at Massey University in New Zealand. Previously, he was at Victoria University (1994 to 2015), where he was a Professor of Psychology and Co-Director of the Centre for Applied Cross Cultural Research. He was a renowned expert in cross-cultural and indigenous psychology; his work centered on how Chinese philosophy and culture influences the present-day psychology and practices of Chinese people today (with several articles written with his late father).
James was an active member of the International Society of Political Psychology for many years and contributed to the Society in numerous ways. Most recently, he was Co-Editor-in-Chief of ISPP’s flagship journal, Political Psychology, along with Prof. Orla Muldoon of the University of Limerick.
James was an incredible scholar and academic, with more than 200 refereed publications, which have been cited more than 10,000 times. He mentored many students to have successful and flourishing careers and his loss to psychology and academia is immeasurable. James was a loving father and husband and family man and he was a treasured friend and colleague to many. ISPP mourns his loss.
The next ISPPNews will be published in October 2024.
To submit your contributions for ISPPNews please send an email to the ISPP Central Office.
Benefits of your ISPP Membership
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
P.O. Box 1213 Columbus, NC 28722 USA www.ispp.org
