Professor Dominic Abrams

About

Dominic is a Professor of Social Psychology and the Director of the Centre for the Study of Group Processes in the School of Psychology at the University of Kent. His research examines all aspects of relations between different social groups and the behaviour of groups in general.

Dominic has extensive experience in the areas of equality and human rights, prejudice, discrimination, social attitudes and social change across the life course. His expertise spans social and developmental psychology and gerontology and uses a wide range of methods, ranging from laboratory and field experiments to national and international surveys.

Dominic has worked closely both with the charitable sector (notably Age UK, the Anne Frank Trust, and People United), and with government departments (DWP, CLG) as well as with the Equality and Human Rights Commission to develop and evaluate interventions to reduce prejudice and discrimination. He has authored and co-authored over 200 papers and numerous books on groups, identity and social inclusion, and edits the journal Group Processes and Intergroup Relations.

Dominic is also a fellow of several professional associations and recipient of the British Psychological Society’s Presidents’ award for distinguished contribution to psychology. He is the only psychologist outside America to have been elected president of Division 9 of the American Psychological Association (the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues), as well as being a recipient of its distinguished contribution award. He was also a founding member of the Academy of Social Sciences, and one of his first acts was to chair the committee that drew together all of the different learned societies. More recently, he was appointed Vice President for Social Sciences at the British Academy, where his role is similarly to be able to link with and draw on experts across the entire range of disciplines.

Research interests

Dominic's main areas of current research are in the broad area of group processes and intergroup relations. Themes and topics include:

Social exclusion and prejudice

Intergroup contact, collective action protest

Deviance (particularly the subjective group dynamics model)

Development of understanding about groups and group processes in middle childhood and adolescence

Ageism and age stereotypes, including stereotype threat

Social identity in organisational contexts.

For more information about Dominic's publications please visit: https://www.kent.ac.uk/psychology/people/212/abrams-dominic

Supervision

Shazza Ali (ESRC CASE 1+3 studentship): TBA
Maria Heering TBA
Hilal Özkececi (2017-2020 – Vice Chancellor's Scholarship):TBA