Attendees

Dr. Andrea Vial is an Assistant Professor at NYU Abu Dhabi and the director of the Social Roles and Beliefs Lab (www.socialroleslab.com), which is dedicated to investigating the psychology of gender employment segregation. Dr. Vial earned her PhD in Psychology from Yale University in 2018. Her research draws from social psychological, organizational, and developmental perspectives to investigate the processes that shape individuals’ career choices and how norms and stereotypes constrain their opportunities. She’s particularly interested in understanding how gender prejudice spreads in organizations, how people think of leadership in gender-stereotypic ways, and how work culture reflects and reinforces gender segregation.

Duygu is a third-year Ph.D. student in psychology at NYU. Her research focuses on how children reason about the normative and structural aspects of society. For example, she examines how children understand norms and social roles, and how they interpret fairness and legitimacy. Prior to joining NYU, Duygu received her B.A. in Psychology and M.A. in Developmental Psychology from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul.

Elena is a doctoral researcher at RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and her Master’s degree from RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau. Her research focuses on men’s communal engagement, examined in the context of the transition to first-time fatherhood. She studies which factors shape fathers’ uptake and duration of parental leave, with a particular interest in workplace conditions, partnership dynamics, and gender role beliefs. By identifying barriers and facilitators of men’s engagement in caregiving roles, her work aims to inform pathways toward a more equal division of labor at home and greater gender equality in society.

Elisabeth Höhne is a PhD student at Leibniz Universität Hannover and research associate at Universitätsmedizin Rostock. In her research, she examines how social processes shape the psychological experiences of children, adolescents, and young adults - particularly those with minority status. She is especially interested in the role of stereotypes, social integration, and belonging in educational settings, as well as stigmatization in the context of mental health. Beyond her research, she lectures at Leibniz Universität Hannover and NYU Berlin, serves as Editor for Social and Educational Psychology at In-Mind magazine, and is a child and adolescent psychotherapist in training at Freie Universität Berlin. 

Helena is a PhD student in social psychology at RPTU University of Kaiserslautern-Landau and scholar of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. She received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Psychology from Julius-Maximilian-University of Würzburg and in her PhD research, examined what it means to be a woman and what a "real" woman looks like in 2025. More specifically, her work focuses on how women respond emotionally and behaviorally when their femininity, particularly their physical femininity, is threatened or questioned.

Kai Barron is a Research Associate at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and a member of the Berlin School of Economics. He received his PhD in Economics from University College London and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Cape Town. He is a microeconomist working in experimental and behavioural economics. His research examines the cognitive foundations of economic decision-making, with a focus on belief formation, narratives, and mental models, and applies these insights to topics such as discrimination, economic disparities, and how children develop their understanding of the world.

Katharina Wrohlich is Professor of Public Finance, Gender and Family Economics at the University of Potsdam and Head of the Gender Economics Research Group at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin). Her research focuses on the evaluation of labor market, family and tax policy on employment and wages of women. Moreover, she is working on the issue of gender gaps in the labor market, in particular in terms of wages and leadership positions. Before joining the gender economics research group at DIW, Katharina was research associate and deputy head of the public economics department at DIW Berlin. She finished her PhD at the Free University of Berlin in 2007. Prior to her doctoral studies, she studied at the University of Vienna and at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Lavinia Kinne is a postdoctoral researcher (on tenure track) at the Gender Economics Research Group in the Public Economics Department of DIW Berlin. She is also part of the Berlin School of Economics, guest researcher at the University of Potsdam, and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Analysis (CEPA). Her research interests are Gender/Labor, Education, and Behavioral Economics. She works on the relationship between economic preferences and education outcomes, gender differences in adult competencies, especially in top positions, and the impact of feedback on learning. She uses field experiments as well as large-scale observational data.

Lena Hipp is a German sociologist and research professor specializing in work, family, and social inequality. She holds a PhD in Organizational Behavior from Cornell University and is Professor of Social Inequality and Social Policy at the University of Potsdam and a research professor at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Her work examines how gender, caregiving obligations, and cultural norms shape inequalities in labor markets and family life. Using surveys, experiments, and comparative methods, Hipp has shown how motherhood affects hiring, how gender-typical careers influence partnership markets, and how unpaid and paid care work is distributed. Her research has earned her the 2024 Forschung in Verantwortung prize for societal impact.

Prof. Dr. Lysann Zander is Full Professor of Empirical Education Research at Leibniz University Hannover, Germany. She previously served as Dean of Studies of the Faculty of Humanities (2019–2023) and as Director of the Institute of Education (2023–2025). Her research advances the understanding of educational inequalities related to gender and ethnicity by examining how students’ social networks and relationships shape students’ educational trajectories. Focusing on women in STEM as well as ethnic minority and international students, she shows how implicit, stereotype-based status hierarchies set in motion dynamics that shape not only students’ self-perceptions, but also their relationship patterns and access to social resources —ultimately influencing their persistence and growth. With her interdisciplinary research group, she translates these insights into concrete, evidence-based interventions that foster academic thriving in individuals and learning communities across schools and universities.

Maja Adena is the Head of the Research Group Information, Incentives, Inequality at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) and a Professor of Economics at TU Berlin. Her research focuses on prosocial behavior, gender, and inequality, with particular emphasis on how information, incentives, and social norms shape individual decision-making. Using field experiments, survey experiments, and large-scale administrative data, she studies giving behavior, the effects of media exposure, and political polarization. Her work has been published in leading journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Journal of Public Economics.

Nadine Knab is a social and peace psychologist and postdoctoral researcher affiliated with Humboldt University and Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Her work investigates how individual psychological processes interact with social and political dynamics to shape patterns of social cohesion, conflict, and polarization, with a particular interest in how these multilevel processes influence collective responses to societal challenges. She combines approaches from social, political, and clinical psychology to develop intervention strategies that can reduce conflict and foster solidarity and collective action. Nadine is actively engaged in interdisciplinary research, teaching, and science communication, with a strong commitment to transferring psychological insights into civil society and policy contexts.

Dr. Nina-Sophie Fritsch is a sociologist at the WU in Vienna at the Institute for Sociology and Empirical Social Research and at the University of Potsdam at the Chair for Social Structure and Social Inequality. Her research interests comprise the fields of social inequality, gender and the labour market. Additionally, she is the PI of the FFG-funded research project investigating gender-specific differences in the labour market.

Dr. Ricarda Steinmayr is a professor of educational psychology at the Technical University Dortmund, Germany. She has been conducting research on the subjective well-being of adolescents for several years and has published numerous internationally recognized studies on the topic. Her other research focuses include the determinants of academic performance, with particular attention to gender, social background, motivation, intelligence, and personality, as well as the topic of giftedness. Currently, she is working on rolling out a school-based intervention for enhancing social and emotional skills, originally successful in Ireland, for promoting the subjective well-being of adolescents in Germany.

Sebastian Grueneisen's research explores the developmental and evolutionary origins of human cooperation. To this end, he conducts experimental studies with young children and, to a lesser degree, nonhuman great apes investigating the mechanisms underlying prosocial behavior, coordinated decision-making, and norm understanding. More recently, he  has also investigated whether prosocial motives and commitments emanating from cooperative activities can encourage young children to break rules in the service of cooperative goals. This work aims to reveal whether the development of cooperative inclinations is causally linked to the emergence of certain transgressive behaviors.

Susanne Bruckmüller is professor and chair of Social Psychology, Gender, and Diversity at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. Her research focuses on the intersection between social cognition and communication, with a particular emphasis on asymmetries and inequalities. This includes, for instance, how power, stigma, and stereotypes are perpetuated through language, and the consequences of habitually framing intergroup comparisons and social inequalities in one-sided ways. Further research interests are the psychology of trust and asymmetries between basic dimensions of person perception. Susanne’s work emphasizes theoretical integration and commitment to principles of open science.

Ursula Kessels received her doctoral degree in psychology in 2001 and was awarded her habilitation in 2007 from Freie Universität Berlin. From 2009 to 2013, she was a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Cologne. Since 2013, she has been a Professor of Educational Research at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include social identities, stereotypes, and bias, with a focus on educational disparities related to gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background.

I am a PhD student and research assistant at the Chair of Empirical Economics and Gender at Freie Universität Berlin, and a researcher at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. I am affiliated with the DFG-funded project “Gender Norms and Labor Market Outcomes” and a fellow of the Joachim Herz Foundation. My doctoral research is supervised by Prof. Dr. Natalia Danzer and Prof. Dr. Claudia Senik. I hold an M.Sc. (with honors) in Socio-Ecological Economics and Policy from the Vienna University of Economics and Business and was previously a scholarship holder of the Cusanuswerk Foundation. I have gained research experience at the University of California, Irvine; Bocconi University; Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia; the Paris School of Economics; and the Institute for Structural Research (IBS) in Warsaw. In addition, I have completed internships with several international organizations, including the United Nations. My research interests lie in applied microeconometrics and experimental economics, with a particular focus on gender, LGBTQI+ issues, and economic history in Central and Eastern Europe.