Sumários

Conducting respectful research with trans+, intersex and non binary populations. René_Rain Hornestein

27 Junho 2024, 17:00 Susana Batel


Conducting research with trans*, intersex and non-binary (TIN) people has become more common in recent years since the socalled „transgender tipping point“ in the public’s consciousness has been reached, as was declared by Time Magazine in 2014. This presentation aimed to share foundational principles for conducting research with TIN people that is respectful and ethically grounded, reflecting on the impacts on the individual research participants and on how the produced results will impact TIN communities.

Isabel Menezes: On citizenship, participation and the political.

20 Maio 2024, 16:00 Susana Batel


In this talk, Isabel Menezes will address the journey as a researcher interested in civic and political participation from back when it was not such a hot topic. She will try to show how (unexpected) data and theory are a researcher's best friends - and how they can guide us beyond the (unfortunate) consensus that “citizen participation is a little like eating spinach: no one is against it in principle because it is good for you” (Sherry Arnstein, 1969, p. 216). She will address three topics that continue, in her view, to be central to the debate: 1) what is citizen participation? 2) is there a rational-emotional divide (and does it matter)? 3) why is participation important, anyway, for individuals and communities?

Gender and sexual orientation: a social communication perspective

17 Maio 2024, 17:30 Susana Batel


The presentation, delivered by Fabio Fasoli (University of Surrey, UK), discussed how in everyday life, we are constantly exposed to information concerning gender and sexual orientation. When we listen to someone's voice, we immediately assume their gender and sexual identity. When we interact with others we use language to describe the gender and sexual orientation of a person and the language we use can have consequences. When we engage with media, we are exposed to representations of what societies expect women, men, and gender and sexual minorities to look like. In this talk, he presented different lines of research showing how language and communication can elicit stereotyping and discrimination but also how language can be a tool to buffer negative biases.

Citizenship as participation claim and belonging: Potential and Intersections in social psychological research

9 Maio 2024, 17:30 Susana Batel


This conference, delivered by Lia Figgou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) sketched a social psychological framework for the study of citizenship and explored its potential through considering qualitative data from empirical studies on migration and LGBTQI+ rights. The studies used the principles and tools of critical discursive social psychology and adopted a social constructionist, bottom-up approach to the study of citizenship. Citizenship (as claims, rights, participation and belonging) is approached as participants’ resource. The findings highlighted the potential of the construct of citizenship to serve a) as a means of (re)politicizing social psychological research, b) as a tool that allows for combining different levels of analysis and c) as a means of understanding the complexity of processes of participation and belonging, as well as their intersection. The presentation concluded by reflecting on the advantages and limitations of (the elusiveness and fluidity) of the citizenship construct.

World-Making: Field social psychology and processes of social change

3 Maio 2024, 17:00 Susana Batel


Seamus Power (Associate Professor in Psychology at University of Copenhagen, Denmark) introduce the idea of social psychology as world-making. This conceptualization, illuminated by field research, aims to re-expand the dominant social psychological paradigm and create space for different ways of thinking about social psychology. I illustrate the forms and possibilities of this approach through various research projects. First, I will discuss my research on social change and protest movements.  Next, I will discuss how social psychology contributed to the making of new social realities, and to the study of people making these social realities, in the context of Covid-19. Third, I will present research illustrating that multiculturalism, not ethnonationalism, is the dominant cultural model in the United States. I end by outlining the big questions that motivate my current and future research and by considering the implications of viewing social psychology as world-making.