First, I hope you and your families are well in this time of great concern about the global pandemic and in the midst of a movement to protest police violence and racism in the United States and around the world.
I write as we make final preparations for our first ever virtual annual meeting, to be held in lieu of the Berlin meeting. It was a painful decision to cancel the in-person meeting, and I know we all would have liked to be together to share our new work, honor each other’s accomplishments, and reconnect with our friends in a beautiful and historic city. Despite the disappointment about the many lost opportunities created by the pandemic, we are reminded of the importance of the research being done throughout the organization.
So many of you are working on questions that are central to the political dynamics in so many regions of the world. Many enduring conflicts we have studied for decades are now salient to citizens around the world. The whole world is united in its sense of vulnerability as we fight a disease more serious than any in perhaps a century. Citizens of democracies are suddenly becoming aware, perhaps for the first time, of the fragility of their government institutions. Yet, at the same time, younger generations around the world are becoming aware of their political influence as they join a diverse social movement to dismantle systemic racism wherever they find it. These are the topics we study. The great task before us is to apply our rigorous, diverse methods of observation, experimentation, interviewing and historical analysis to understand these times.
A task force of leaders in our group has been working tirelessly since March to bring this meeting together. I know you will join me in thanking them profusely for this effort. The 2020 ISPP Virtual Conference Task Force includes Lilliana Mason, Thomas Cramer, Chris Federico, Anna Kende, Shelley McKeown Jones, and our fantastic Central Office staff Sev Bennett and Heather Schlabach. Lily and Thomas were the program directors for the Berlin conference, and they and their section chairs had nearly completed the planning for the in-person meeting when the pandemic struck. They and the rest of this team then completely reengineered the program, to make sure we could have the best possible intellectual exchange in July. I am so proud and grateful to all of them for their efforts, and for those of so many others in the organization, for making this conference happen.
I am also proud to inform you that nearly 600 members have registered for the virtual conference. This turnout is a sign of the great energy we all feel right now for our joint work as a field. I hope the experience for those of you in attendance is rewarding and enriching, even though we could not, unfortunately, eliminate the feeling of jet lag for all of you on the schedule given our international spread! Thank you all for trusting ISPP with your time and your precious resources.
For the younger generation of political psychologists reading this message, please know there will be a role for you to help in the future, so that your own students and their colleagues have these same opportunities for intellectual exchange and professional growth in a group that cares for each other’s success. We celebrate and stand with you as colleagues and friends. I look forward to seeing you virtually this year, and in person in the years to come.
Wishing you and your loved ones peace, good health, and social justice,
Our 2021 Annual Meeting will be held in Montreal, Canada | July 15-17, 2021 If you are interested in hosting a future conference of ISPP, please contact the Central Office to obtain the necessary guidelines and materials.
ISPP joins calls to safeguard the academic autonomy of Romania's universities and academic institutions
The International Society of Political Psychology ISPP has learned about legislation which was passed by the Romanian parliament earlier this month that bans gender studies programs at the country’s schools and universities. We respectfully call on Romanian President, Klaus Iohannis to reconsider the proposal. Two years ago, a similar ban was implemented in Hungary, and we stand by our opinion that such laws threaten the academic freedom of students, teachers, and scholars, and question the academic autonomy of universities in Romania. The ISPP is an international scientific association with members across the world, including Romania. Our members include psychologists, political scientists, psychiatrists, historians, sociologists, economists, anthropologists, many of whom contribute to gender studies. Indeed, gender issues inform the work many of us do. Scientific analysis of social differences and structural inequalities from a gender perspective is crucial for the understanding of societies, historically and in the contemporary context. By banning gender studies, understanding these fundamental dynamics is hampered. ISPP appeals to the Romanian president to uphold the principle of academic freedom for researchers, teachers and students, irrespective of scholarly discipline.
Call for the New Twinning Program
Call for the New Twinning Program
We are happy to announce that we are currently 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) and we continue to welcome applications from scholars who would like to serve as partners in the program. 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 16 scholars from 10 countries who have already expressed their interest to work together with a scholar under threat as partners. As most of the partners have a background in psychology, we would especially like to encourage our political scientist members to apply as partners.
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 Social Psychology, University of Sussex, UK
A Postdoctoral Researcher is needed for a new ESRC-funded research project at the University of Sussex. The project aims to provide a new theoretical understanding of the social psychology of crowd flight, which occurs in response to perceived hostile threats. The work will involve using archive, news media, and interview data to understand key historical and contemporary ‘stampede’ incidents to help develop the new theoretical model.
3-year postdoc with focus on social media and political hostility, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University
The Department of Political Science at Aarhus BSS, Aarhus University, invites applications for a 3-year postdoctoral position offering applicants an exciting opportunity to join a research project with a focus on political hostility on social media.
The position is part of the ROPH project (Research on Online Political Hostility), led by Professor Michael Bang Petersen and funded by 15.7 million DKK by the Carlsberg Foundation. The ROPH project seeks to identify the causes, consequences and potential counter-strategies related to online political hostility and gathers researchers from the fields of political psychology, evolutionary psychology, radicalization research, media science and physics. Application deadline: September 16th, 2020 | More information
Call for submissions
Call for papers: COVID-19 Pandemic Special Topic (Fast-Track Submissions)
We welcome submissions of empirical articles reporting social psychological research on the COVID-19 pandemic. We also encourage submissions of review articles or re-analysis of existing data if they relate to COVID-19. We are interested in both research on the psychosocial consequences of pandemic, as well as on social determinants of the thoughts, feelings and behavior of people during the pandemic and in relation to the pandemic outcomes. Application deadline: September 15th, 2020 | More information
Call for unpublished or nearly published empirical research on the Turkish-Kurdish Conflict
Ercan Şen, Yasemin Gülsüm Acar, Elif Sandal Önal, and Mete Sefa Uysal are working on a literature review that focuses on social psychological studies on the Kurds, Kurdishness, and/or Turkish-Kurdish Conflict in Turkey.
They are looking for unpublished or nearly published empirical research (in-press and conference papers, dissertations, master theses, etc.) on the Turkish-Kurdish Conflict, where the sample of the study is in/from Turkey. There is no restriction about the ethnic background of the sample; we will include the studies that collect data from Kurds, Turks, Armenians, Arabs, etc., who lived in Turkey. Mainly but not exclusively, they are looking at studies on ethnic and civic identity, contact, conflict narratives, reconciliation process, collective action, victimhood, and forgiveness in the context of the Turkish-Kurdish Conflict.
If you have a paper that might be relevant, please contact them by 30th June 2020 on: metesefauysal@gmail.com
Call for unpublished data for meta-analysis: Ingroup glorification and participant gender
Quinnehtukqut McLamore and Berni Leidner are conducting a meta-analysis examining differences by gender in ingroup glorification (see Roccas et al., 2006). If you happen to have data that you can send them with:
(1) measures of attachment and glorification and
(2) demographic information on participant gender,
It would be greatly appreciated and very helpful. If you have that data for them, please send them:
the raw data for your study or studies;
a brief description of how our variables of interest are coded;
a brief description of the sample (sampling and participant recruitment strategy, nationality of participants); and
a brief description of the study design.
If you have any questions or if you are unsure if your data fit our criteria, please contact Berni Leidner (bleidner@umass.edu).
The next ISPPNews will be published in August 2020.
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
P.O. Box 1213 Columbus, NC 28722 USA
1+828-894-5422 www.ispp.org
