Speakers

Born and raised in Warsaw, Maria Babinska is graduate student and junior researcher at the Center for Research on Prejudice, University of Warsaw. In 2013, she obtained her Bachelors degree in applied social sciences and three years later she defended her Masters thesis in sociology researching the uses of collective memory in the anti-refugee discourse. In the meantime, Maria also studied psychology and in 2016 she was an exchange student at the Catholic University of Louvain la Neuve (Belgium) and a research intern at the Social Psychology department at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. Throughout her studies, Maria participated in various research projects on both collective memory and intergroup relations. Now she pursues her Ph.D degree in social psychology. Her main area of interest includes motivational aspects of collective memory biases, namely how individual need for control and moral acceptance “shape” narratives of ingroup history.

Daniel Bar-Tal is Professor Emeritus at the School of Education, Tel Aviv University. His research interest is in political and social psychology studying socio- psychological foundations of intractable conflicts and peace building, as well as development of political understanding among children and peace education. He has published over twenty books and over two hundreds articles and chapters in major social and political psychological journals, books and encyclopedias. He served as a President of the International Society of Political Psychology and received various awards for his work, including the Alexander George Award of the International Society of Political Psychology for the best book in Political Psychology. In 2006 he also received Peace Scholar Award of the Peace and Justice Studies Association for
great scholarship and hard work in studying conflicts and peacemaking. In 1991 and again in 2009, he was awarded the Otto Klineberg Intercultural and International
Relations Prize of SPSSI Then he received the Lasswell Award and the Nevitt Sanford Award of the International Society of Political Psychology and the Morton
Deutsch Conflict Resolution Award of the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence (Div. 48 of APA). He retired in 2015 and decided to devote his second career to political activism. He founded a peace movement Save Israel-Stop the Occupation with the goal to struggle for ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and establishing the Palestinian state.

Michał Bilewicz (Ph. D., University of Warsaw) is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Warsaw, Poland, where he
chairs the Center for Research on Prejudice. Previously, he was a Fulbright scholar at the New School for Social Research in New York and DAAD post-doctoral fellow at University of Jena in Germany. His research interests include conspiracy theories, reconciliation processes, dehumanization, prejudice, and collective moral emotions. His works on conspiracy theories are mostly focusing on psychological and societal antecedents of conspiracy beliefs (deprivation, loss of control, historical victimization) as well as attitudes between conspiracy believers and non-believers. In 2013 he co-edited a special issue of Journal of Social Issues on the consequences of genocide and in 2015 a volume The Psychology of Conspiracy (Routledge). He co-ordinates the first Polish diagnostic survey on xenophobia – the nationally representative Polish Prejudice Survey (first round in 2009, second in 2013). He presented his reports on anti-Semitism to the Polish Parliament (Ethnic Minorities Commission) and in the years 2013-2016 he served as a consultant to the Polish Ministry of Administration in the Council to Prevent Racism and Xenophobia.

Dominika Bulska is a doctoral candidate at the Center for Research of Prejudice. She received her MA in Psychology from University of Warsaw and graduated cum laude with a MSc from Conflict Resolution and Governance at the University of Amsterdam. Her scientific interests lie on the crossroads between the psychology of intergroup relations, namely prejudice, and the psychology of conflict. She is interested in the impact of prejudice on the perception of distal ethnic conflicts as well as the relationship between intergroup failures of empathy and conflict escalation. Large part of her research activity is devoted to the new ways of
expressing prejudice, namely the relationship between Antisemitism and anti-Israelism. She was a member of Negotiation Research Team, co-responsible for the studies on the difference between mediation and negotiation process. She is an AC4-IACM fellow.

Daniel Druckman received the IACM Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. His keynote address, presented at the Melbourne conference, appears in the International Journal of Conflict Management (Vol, 14, No. 1, 2003). He is currently Emeritus Professor of Public and International Affairs at the Schar School of Government and Policy, George Mason University. He is also an Honorary Professor at both Macquarie University in Sydney and at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Previously he has been the Vernon M. and Minnie I. Lynch Professor of Conflict Resolution and directed the doctoral program at George Mason’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. In addition, he has held appointments as the Mathtech Scientist at Mathematica Inc. in Bethesda Maryland, at the US National Academy of Sciences, Sabanci University in Istanbul. the Australian National University, the University of Western Australia (Alcoa visiting professor), the University of Melbourne, the University of Southern Queensland, the University of Uppsala in Sweden, and at the National Yunlin University in Taiwan. Dan is known for his multi-faceted and innovative research in the areas of international negotiation, nationalism, justice in peace agreements, electronic mediation, peacekeeping, nonverbal communication, human performance enhancement, and modeling methodologies including simulation. The impact of his work has crossed academic boundaries by combining theory and application into frameworks that have been used by governments as well as international and private organizations. He earned a Ph.D. from North western University in the field of social psychology with interdisciplinary work in international relations and sociology. His doctoral dissertation received a best-in- field award from the American Institutes for Research. Among his other awards are the Klineberg International and Intercultural Relations prize from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (a division of the American Psychological Association) for his work on nationalism, best article awards from IACM and from Group Decision and Negotiation, two best book awards from the IACM, and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016 from the Novancia Business School in Paris. Among his 241 publications are 20 authored, co-authored or edited books. He is an associate editor of three journals, serves on the editorial board of seven other journals, and co-edits a book series on International Negotiation. He served as president of IACM in 2010-2011 (Istanbul conference) and is chair of the Association’s Advisory Council.

Dr hab. Jan Skórzyński (1954) – historyk i politolog, wykładowca Collegium Civitas w Warszawie. Zajmuje się powojenną historią Polski, opozycją demokratyczną w PRL i problemami transformacji po komunizmie. Redaktor naczelny czasopisma naukowego „Wolność i Solidarność. Studia z dziejów opozycji wobec komunizmu i dyktatury”. Autor m.in. Kalendarium Solidarności 1980-89 (1990, 2005), Ugoda i rewolucja. Władza i opozycja 1985 – 1989 (1995), Rewolucja Okrągłego Stołu (2009), Zadra. Biografia Lecha Wałęsy (2009), Siła bezsilnych. Historia Komitetu Obrony Robotników (2012), Krótka historia Solidarności 1980-1989 (2014), Na przekór geopolityce. Europa Środkowo- Wschodnia w myśli politycznej polskiej opozycji demokratycznej 1976-1989 (2014), Nie ma chleba bez wolności. Polski sprzeciw wobec komunizmu 1956 – 1980 (2017).

Janusz Grzelak, psychologist, professor emeritus at Warsaw University and Academy of Special Education, affiliate professor at University of Delaware (US). He served as a vice-rector of Warsaw University and, twice, as a dean of Psychology Faculty. His academic interests and publications are focused on social interdependence and motivational basis of conflict between individual and common goods. He was invited as a visiting professor to number of universities in the United States and Europe.
Janusz Grzelak was "Solidarity" high rank activist, deeply involved in underground movement in the 80-ties. He served as vice-chairperson of the Education and Science sub-table and also negotiation advisor in the Round Table Talks. As a deputy minister, he was responsible for higher education in the first post-communist Polish government. In recognition of contribution to state transformations he was awarded with "Polonia Restituta" Order, a highly prestigious state honor in Poland. He received, together with Janusz Reykowski, the Morton Deutsch Conflict Award for Social Justice.

Łukasz Jochemczyk, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Warsaw. His whole life revolves around negotiation and complex systems. PhD in Psychology, but his scientific interests involve dynamical aspects of negotiations and conflicts. In his research he particularly focuses on communication processes in negotiation. He created the Dynamical Negotiation Networks and has been testing it in his laboratory. He has worked with community conflicts as a consultant, mediator and/or facilitator: NIMBY, participatory public space planning, and deliberative opinion polls. He is a New York certified mediator. He teached negotiation, conflict resolution, environmental conflicts, environmental negotiation, assertiveness, and time management. He collaborates with the ICCCR, Columbia University. In his spare time, he enjoys flying gliders and running marathons.

Anna Kende is an Associate Professor of Social Psychology at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Her research focuses on hostile and pro-social forms of intergroup attitudes and behavior such as discrimination, collective action, and volunteerism. Specifically, she has conducted research on antigypsyism and antisemitism, and prejudice against other target groups. Her research is responsive to ongoing social issues and political movements: she recently conducted research related to the refugee crisis, the #MeToo campaign, populist political movements, and volunteerism related to homelessness. She is the head of the Social Groups and Media Research Lab, and participates in various international collaborations both within the Eastern European region and outside. She is a member of EASP and ISPP, and participated in the preparation of the Diversity report for EASP.

Mirosław Kofta, Full professor, University of Warsaw, Psychology Faculty & Institute for Social Studies. Research interests: control deprivation and cognitive functioning; stereotypes, prejudice, and dehumanization; conspiracy theories and antisemitism; political powerlessness; gender bias. Publications in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; Journal of Experimental Psychology: General; European Journal of Social Psychology; Journal of Social Issues; Political Psychology; Sex Roles.
Current focus: the research grant from the National Science Center (Poland), on Control Deprivation, (Inter)Group Relations, and Political Cognition. We seek to answer how control deprivation affects human cognitive and affective responses (depending on control deprivation duration), and, how these processes manifest at the level of (inter)group and political cognition. The model integrates the learned helplessness perspective with control-restoration perspective. It assumes that, when people are confronted with mounting control deprivation, they pass through 3 phases of responding: coping stage (lack of control as challenge), justification/defensive stage (lack of control as threat), and hopelessness stage (disengagement from active coping).

Paulina Górska is a PhD candidate in Psychology at the University of Warsaw. Her research interests include collective action, intergroup contact, social inequalities, hate crime and sexual prejudice. Her dissertation concerns collective action related to LGBT rights. Her two large projects on collective action have recently received funding from the National Science Centre, Poland. One of these projects concerns activism performed by the advantaged in support of or against the disadvantaged. The other project is focused on the relational and temporal dimensions of collective action. She cooperates with the Campaign Against Homophobia, a Polish nonprofit organization for the equal rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. She co-authored a
research report on hate crime effects for the Polish Commissioner for Human Rights. She was a Visting Scholar at the University of Groningen, Netherlands, and University of Michigan, USA. She was awarded the START Scholarship by the Foundation for Polish Science and the J. J. Lipski Award for Humanities and Social Science
Masters Research.

Stephen Reicher is currently Wardlaw Professor of Psychology at the University of St. Andrews. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Stephen has published some 300 books, book chapters and papers in the general area of
social identity and collective action. His research has covered such topics as crowd action, intergroup hatred, nationalism and national identity, conformity and obedience and, latterly, he has worked on leadership – especially the psychology of authoritarian populism. In addition to his academic work, Professor Reicher has always been an activist and he has advised both civil society and government on topics ranging from public order, to collective resilience social inclusion and social cohesion.

Janusz Reykowski, Professor of Psychology at the Polish Academy of Science, co founder and Chairman of the Academic Council of the Warsaw School of Social Psychology (now retired). He is a member of the Academia Europea, served as a President of the Polish Psychological Association and is Honorary Member of this Association as well as Honorary Member of the Polish Society of Social Psychology. He was a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science at Stanford and received Morton Deutsch Award For Social Justice (Columbia University 2008). He also was awarded by the International Society of Political Psychology the Sanford Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Political Psychology. He was elected a President of this Society. In the first part of his career he conducted extensive research on stress and emotions, and later on prosocial behavior and altruism – he participated in the international research program (Altruistic Personality project) studying rescuers of Jew during Nazi occupation of Europe. In the last two decades his research has focused on political psychology, specifically on solving political conflicts and on the development of democratic attitudes. This line of interest was expressed in practice, as he contributed to the democratic transition in Poland, being one of the chief negotiators for the Polish government in the critical Round Table talks. Through the years he published 10 books and over hundred articles and chapters (in various languages). Also, he was invited as a visiting professor to number of universities in US (Columbia University, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of California Irvine), in Germany (in Berlin, in Leipzig), in Russia (Moscow) and in other countries.

Sabina Čehajić-Clancy is an Associate Professor of Political Psychology and Dean of
the Political Science and International Relations Department at the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology. She holds a PhD in Social Psychology from Sussex University (2008). She is also affiliated with Stanford University as a former Fulbright scholar. She is an expert in the area of intergroup reconciliation for which she has received many dissertation and career awards. Her research fits into four main categories: intergroup contact/dialogue, intergroup emotions, social identity and shared education. She has 15+ years of experience in working as a consultant for USAID, UN agencies and other more grassroots based NGOs in the area of education, peace-building, conflict and reconciliation, as well as designing and evaluating reconciliation-focused interventions. She has published numerous journal articles on issues related to intergroup reconciliation, moral responsibility, forgiveness and intergroup emotions. Her work has also received wide national and international coverage. Sabina also serves on the editorial boards for Political Psychology and the European Journal of Social Psychology.

Nurit Shnabel received her PhD from Tel-Aviv University. After completing her postdoctoral studies as a Fulbright Exchange Scholar at Yale University, she joined the School of Psychological Sciences at Tel-Aviv University in 2010. Most of her work focuses on the needs-based model of reconciliation, a theoretical framework for understanding the dynamics between victims and perpetrators, which was awarded by the International Association for Conflict Management (IACM). Her more recent work focuses on subtle social psychological mechanisms that contribute to the perpetuation of traditional gender roles. In addition, she has facilitated encounters between adversarial groups in Israel. Dr. Shnabel can be reached at shnabeln[at]post.tau.ac.il.

Wiktor Soral is a researcher in the Center for Research on Prejudice and Institute for Social Studies at the University of Warsaw. His main research interests are focused on social cognition, specifically in the context of group processes and intergroup relations. He is especially interested in how people seek for and identify self and others agency, be it at the level of basic perceptual mechanisms (e.g. intentional binding), or when seeking for agentic ingroup (e.g. powerful nation) or outgroup members (e.g. conspiring minorities). His recent works – in a more applied domain – address psychological antecedents and consequences of exposure and using of hate speech. He is also a co-editor and a co-author of a volume „The Psychology of Conspiracy” devoted to recent approaches to studying why people believe in conspiracy theories.

Martijn van Zomeren (PhD 2006, University of Amsterdam) is a professor of the cultural and political psychology of social relationships at the University of Groningen. His research interests revolve around testing and developing theories of motivation and social structure to understand when and why individuals achieve social change together. He is a recipient of the EASP Jos Jaspars Early Career Award (2011) and ISPP's Erik Erikson Early Career Award (2016). He has recently published a monograph (From self to social relationships: An essentially relational perspective on social motivation; Cambridge University Press, 2016)
and an edited book with prof. John F. Dovidio (The Oxford Handbook of the Human Essence, Oxford University Press, 2017), and is currently editor-in-chief (together with Roland Imhoff and Joanne Smith) of the European Journal of Social Psychology.

Marta Witkowska is a PhD candidate at the Center for Research on Prejudice at the University of Warsaw. Her main scientific interests lay at the intersection between social psychology of intergroup relations and broadly considered historical underpinnings of intergroup contact. Beginning from her MA thesis on social representations of Holocaust and history of Polish-Jewish relations among young Polish undergraduates, her research focuses on the role of education in transmitting biased history interpretations and on the consequence of this bias for intergroup attitudes. She expands this research interest in her continuous work on projects awarded with a National Science Centre Poland research grants which focus on issues pertaining to intergroup contact, motivated bases in history perception, and reconciliation between groups with a conflictive and violent past.