The Social Psychology group regularly organises and hosts scientific conferences, workshops, summer schools, guest lectures and other events.
Each term we invite a range of external speakers to come and give a guest lecture to all the researchers in the Social Psychology group. Please see the timetable below of upcoming seminars.
Jessie Sun, Washington University in St. LouisI am an Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. My research examines two fundamental aspects of the good life—well-being and morality—in real-world contexts. To study people “in the wild,” I use a diverse methodological toolkit, including experience sampling, naturalistic audio recordings, informant reports, and personality change interventions. Prior to joining WashU, I was a MindCORE Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, and I received my Ph.D. from UC Davis and my BA (Honours) from the University of Melbourne.
Sanaz Talaifar, Imperial College LondonI am an Assistant Professor in Organisational Behaviour in the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship at Imperial College London. Prior to joining Imperial, I was a Postdoctoral Scholar in Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. I received my PhD in Social and Personality Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin.
Broadly, I am interested in identity and its intersections with politics and technology. More specifically, my research examines 1) how identity acts as a barrier and bridge to mutual understanding between people in political and other contexts, and 2) how identities shape and are shaped by digital environments. I combine traditional methods (surveys, experiments) with novel methods (smartphone sensing, experience sampling) to study identity in both controlled and naturalistic settings.
Angel Gomez, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, MadridI am a Professor at the Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Spain. I am also currently the Director of the Department.
My research is focused on strategies to improve intergroup relations (i.e. recategorization, intergroup contact, extended contact meta-stereotypes), and in those processes involved on such improvement (i.e. self-verification and verification of ingroup identity). My main interest in the last few years is to explain the roots of extreme behaviors and terrorism via identity fusion.
The European Association of Social Psychology Summer School brings together graduate students from across Europe (and beyond) for 10 days of immersive learning, guided by experienced social psychologists from both Europe and beyond. It’s not only a chance for students to gain valuable insights and supervision but also a unique opportunity to connect with fellow graduate students from different countries, fostering cross-border collaborations and long-lasting professional networks.
Organised by Jim Everett, the 2025 summer school will be hosted by the School of Psychology at Kent, and aims to integrate classic theories and research in social psychology with innovative areas of inquiry to address the emerging challenges of today’s society. In the first week, students will attend seminars taught by international experts on their thematic workstream of choice, before spending the second week focusing on developing their own group research projects.
Dr Kristof Dhont is currently serving as President of the Society for the Psychology of Human-Animal Intergroup Relations (PHAIR Society).
The Animal Advocacy Conference is the official general meeting of the PHAIR Society and will be held once every two years.
The goal of the Animal Advocacy Conference is to bring together researchers from different fields in the social and behavioral sciences, and animal activists and advocates from around the world.This conference uniquely bridges the gap between academic researchers and activists/professionals in the field of vegan and animal rights advocacy. It creates a stimulating environment where academics and activists/advocates exchange relevant knowledge, engage in lively debates, share their ideas, and can start collaborations.
This year’s conference kicks off with a public lecture by Peter Singer, described as the world’s most influential living philosopher.
Karen Douglas hosted the CONSPIRACY_FX conference on the consequences of conspiracy theories, funded by the ERC. More than 70 guests were welcomed to the University of Kent, including the leading researchers in the field. The conference included a series of presentations, blitz talks and posters on a wide variety of topics such as political action, war, vaccination, and the climate. Contributors represented a range of disciplines including psychology, philosophy, sociology, and political science, which added to the richness of the discussions.
Social identity theory and related topics have been an area of interest for social psychology and political psychology for decades. The impact of group membership and our social identities on our social and political behaviors can not be understated. Current events, increased political polarization, and intergroup conflict in some areas of the world, reminds us of the importance of understanding the underlying mechanisms of social identity. Recent research on cross-categorization and social identity complexity hints at how social identity research can help to overcome polarization and conflict based on group memberships. This meeting on social identity was designed to bring social identity researchers and theorists together to examine the current state of social identity research, and to foster collaborations and future work in the field.
This single day workshop, organised by Jim Everett, brought together researchers from various disciplines including psychology, philosophy, and computer science to share research and provoke discussions surrounding the moral psychology of artificial intelligence. Keynote speakers included Jean-Francois Bonnefon, John Danaher, Chiara Longoni, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong.
Professor Antonia Hamilton is a world-leading scientist in the study of human social interaction at UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.
Face-to-face interaction is central to our communication and social relationships but traditional cognitive research has not explored the mechanisms that support this behaviour. This talk will examine how and why we should study face-to-face interaction. I will share examples of how behaviour changes as we move from solo to interactive contexts in terms of eye gaze, imitation and brain activity patterns. I will describe how new methods allow us to capture aspects of natural interactions and the type of theories we may need to make sense of these rich dynamic datasets.
Domantas Undzenas, University of Mannheim