EASP Summer School 2024

Dates: 08/July to 19/July 2024

Location: Košice, Slovakia

About

The EASP Summer School is intended to provide graduate students in Europe with the opportunity to come together for two weeks to receive instruction and supervision from senior social psychologists drawn from Europe and the rest of the world. It also provides graduate students with the chance to meet graduate students from other European countries. Since many of these students go on to become full-time academics, this means that even junior academic staff can have an established network of contacts throughout Europe, drawn from fellow participants in a Summer School.

During the Summer School, there will be main workshops, during which the participants not only expand their knowledge in a given area of social psychology, but also design a study (or studies) under the supervision of the teaching staff. Each participant enrolls in one of the main workshops that runs every day during the Summer School.

 

Before the Summer School starts, participants will be asked to read a list of papers that the teachers consider most important in the field (around 20 papers). A list of papers to read will be distributed to the workshop participants before the workshop (e.g., 1.5 months ahead). During the workshop, the teachers will discuss the papers with the participants and are free to propose any other didactic activities related to the topic of the workshop.

 

You can see the history of EASP Summer Schools here https://www.easp.eu/events/summer-schools/?


The Organizers

Jana Papcunová

Yasin Koc

Bibiána Kováčová Holevová

 Main Workshops

The summer school will have 5 main workshops taught by two teachers who are experts in their field. Students will indicate a preference and be allocated to one of these 5 workshops. Each workshop will have 12 students and the students will work with the teachers towards developing cutting-edge research proposals.

Workshop 1: Social Cognition

Hans Alves & Moritz Ingendahl


This workshop will focus on the cognitive processes by which people form attitudes toward individuals and groups. This may include processes of information sampling, attention, memory, and information integration.

Workshop 2: The Social Psychology of Violent Ethno-National Conflicts

Ruthie Pliskin & Islam Borinca


This workshop will focus on the psychological drivers and outcomes of violent ethno-national conflicts, psychological barriers to and interventions for conflict resolution, and the psychology of intergroup relations in conflictual and post-conflict societies. This may include processes ranging from attitudes and group-based emotions to behavior.

Workshop 3: Solidarity and Social Change

Maja Kutlaca & Soledad de Lemus Martín


This workshop will explore social psychological approaches to allyship, cross-group solidarity, and collective action. By critically examining various instances of allyship, we will explore questions such as when and how allies can contribute to or undermine social change efforts.

Workshop 4: Cognitions and Environmental Impact

Cameron Brick & Karlijn van den Broek


This workshop applies social psychology to environmental problems by studying perceptions and impactful behaviors. Previous research often overlooked behavior measure validity and non-psychological determinants. In this workshop, you will learn about mental models and objective behavioural tasks, and design new studies.


Workshop 5: Reacting to Inequality: Sexual and Gender Identities

Yasin Koc & Jenny Veldman


This workshop will focus on how social identities, inequality, and stigma interact with each other, especially in the case of sexual and gender identities. We will draw upon a wide range of theoretical approaches to examine ways people react to inequality in order to improve disadvantaged groups' status as well as their well-being.

 Methodology Workshops

In addition to the main workshops, there will be additional workshops on open science and reproducible research practices, big data analysis, and multivariate analysis during the summer school.

Open Science and Responsible Research Practices: Sharing is caring

Marcel Martončik & Matúš Adamkovič

Data and materials sharing is a crucial component of open science practices. It not only serves as an essential condition for research reproducibility but also enhances the credibility of findings and optimizes resource management (e.g., by allowing other researchers to reuse data). Despite its importance, the process is often undervalued, tedious, and time-consuming. In this workshop, we will first discuss the benefits, barriers, and ethical considerations of sharing resources such as data, materials, code, bikes, etc. Subsequently, we will provide several tips and tricks for effective data sharing, outline the information that should (or should not) be included in a shared data file and its associated codebook. We will show the basic principles for creating a codebook in Excel (based on guidelines from the SCORE project; Center for Open Science) and in the R programming environment (generic code will be made available).

On the trail of psychological variables in the European Social Survey

Denisa Fedáková & Michal Kentoš

Join us for an engaging workshop organized by the Institute of Social Sciences at the Centre for Social and Psychological Sciences (ISS CSPS SAS) where you will learn about the ESS, a European research infrastructure collecting and providing freely available data on social attitudes, beliefs, and behaviour of citizens from over 30 countries and over 20 years. We will explore how social psychologists can benefit from the wealth of data and methodology provided by the ESS, offering valuable insights into the complexities of relevant topics and their (possible) impact on society.


Multilevel Data Analysis
Marcello Gallucci


Social research frequently tackles issues related to exploring the connection between individuals and society. Individuals are shaped by the social groups or contexts to which they belong, and, reciprocally, the characteristics of those groups are influenced by the individuals comprising them. In quantitative methods research this means that individuals and social groups are often components of a hierarchical system, where individuals and groups lie at distinct levels within this hierarchy. Multilevel analysis is the analytical approach for analysing such hierarchical systems. The workshop will provide an overview of the advantages of employing multilevel analysis and an introduction to this method through theory and practical examples.

Main Workshop Teachers

Hans Alves

Hans Alves is a Professor of Social Cognition at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany. Hans is interested in how people come to like or dislike individuals, groups, or objects and why attitudes, judgments, and decisions are sometimes biased. He applies a cognitive-ecological perspective, emphasizing the role of external information ecology and internal cognitive processes in the formation of evaluative biases. His research was awarded an ERC Starting Grant, and he currently serves as an Associate Editor for the European Journal of Social Psychology.

Moritz Ingendahl

Moritz Ingendahl is a postdoctoral researcher in the Social Cognition Lab at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. Moritz studies the cognitive processes underlying attitude change, judgment, and decision making in social, digital, and consumer contexts. His research falls within the areas of social, cognitive, personality, and consumer psychology. His methodological focus is on experimental and correlative methods and statistical modeling.


Ruthie Pliskin

Ruthie Pliskin is an Assistant Professor of Social, Economic and Organisational Psychology at Leiden University. Her central areas of interest are intergroup relations and conflict, emotions and their regulation, and political psychology more broadly, with a focus on ideology. She is also interested in the psychology of social change and collective action, as well as psychological approaches to overcoming barriers to intergroup conflict resolution. Alongside her research, she co-coordinates the Group Processes and Intergroup Relations track in the Dutch national graduate school in social psychology (the KLI). She is Associate Editor at the European Journal of Social Psychology and co-editor of the special issue of Political Psychology: "Crowdsourcing the Next Generation of Ideas." http://www.ruthiepliskin.com/


Islam Borinca

Islam Borinca is an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Groningen and serves as a visiting scholar/Assistant Professor at University College Dublin. Focusing on intergroup relations, conflict, and resolution, his research delves into various subjects such as prejudice, social norms, assistance, intergroup contact, group-based emotions, empathy, dehumanization, meta-dehumanization, intergroup apologies, and trauma. Islam is currently co-editing a special issue centered on "Social Norms and Peace" for the Journal of Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. Moreover, he holds the role of Associate Editor for the Journal Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology & Analyses of Social Issues & Public Policy, in addition to serving as a consulting Editor for the British Journal of Social Psychology.

Maja Kutlaca

Dr Maja Kutlača (she/her) is a social psychologist with a passion for social change, collective action, and music.  She is currently working as an Assistant Professor in Social Psychology at Durham University, UK. Maja’s work revolves around the topics of collective action and allyship with a focus on the role of moral beliefs. Together with Dr Helena Radke and Dr Melis Uluğ , Maja helps coordinate the Collective Action Network.  

Soledad de Lemus Martín

Sole is a Full Professor of Social Psychology. Her research so far has focused on the study of resistance and confrontation processes in unequal intergroup relations, as well as the study of sexism and stereotyping. In her current research, she focuses on the analysis of cooperative intergroup relations (alliances) from the perspective of advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Together with Ana Urbiola, she coordinates the Psychology of Social Change Laboratory at the University of Granada (Spain). 

Cameron Brick

Cameron Brick is an Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam and Associate Professor at the Norway Inland University of Applied Sciences (20%). His social psychological research focuses on pro-environmental behavior. He uses surveys and experiments to descriptively map systems, and to predict behavior from thoughts, identities, personalities, and social context. He also studies consumer and household decisions from plastics to fast fashion, and communication effectiveness focused on the comprehension of policy options. https://www.cameronbrick.com/

Karlijn van den Broek

Dr. Karlijn van den Broek is an Assistant Professor in Environmental Psychology at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University. Her research focuses on people's understanding of the complexity of environmental problems (mental models) and how this understanding influences decision-making and pro-environmental behaviour.

Yasin Koc

Yasin Koc (he, him) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen. His research aims to achieve two major goals: 1) to improve the status of the minoritized groups, 2) to foster positive intergroup relations to achieve higher well-being for all members of society. Yasin has written and published work in top social psychology journals using experimental, correlational, qualitative, and ethnographic methods. He was named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science in 2022. He is currently an associate editor at the British Journal of Social Psychology. He collaborates with amazing colleagues across the world and tries to build a cooperative and supportive work environment for his students within his lab: www.kocsocialidentitieslab.com 

Jenny Veldman

Jenny Veldman is an Assistant Professor in Social and Organizational Psychology at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Her research is in the domain of social identity, stigma, and educational/organizational inequality. Using a combination of methods (e.g., longitudinal, experience sampling, experimental, and person-centered), her primary research examines how members of underrepresented groups navigate majority-group contexts and cope with the challenges they face in work and education (e.g., women in engineering or the military, students from lower SES backgrounds in higher education).

 Methodology Workshop Teachers

Marcel Martončik

Marcel Martončik works at the Institute of Social Science of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Košice and at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. Marcel is interested in how to increase the credibility and replicability of behavioral research and seeks to promote these ways as a co-founder of the Slovak Reproducibility Network. In addition to linking digital gaming to mental health, he is also interested in topics related to esports (competitive gaming) and human performance.

Matúš Adamkovič

Matúš Adamkovič specializes in the methodology of behavioral research, meta-science, and open science. He works as an ERC-funded postdoc (project ORE) at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland), a senior researcher at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, and is the PI of a PRIMUS project at the Charles University (Czechia). He has been involved in multiple projects (e.g., 1x ERC, 2x PRIMUS, 5x APVV, 2x EU Structural Funds, etc.) and international collaborations (e.g., SCORE, PSA, Multi100, Many Economists, etc.). He has served as a reviewer for, among others, Psychological Science Accelerator, PCI RR, and Nature Human Behaviour.

Denisa Fedáková 

Denisa Fedáková is the director of the Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. She is a senior researcher in the field of social and occupational psychology with main focus on quality of (working) life, job/life satisfaction and work-life balance. She has been coordinating the European Social Survey ERIC in Slovakia since 2018 and being the member of the national ESS team since 2004. She has been a member of ESFRI Strategic WG for Social Sciences and Humanities since 2000 and SWG SSH vice-chair since 2023. 


Michal Kentoš 

Michal Kentoš focuses on social psychology and social surveys with an emphasis on representative sampling procedures, psychological measurement, and data processing from large-scale surveys. So far, he has been the principal investigator of 3x VEGA and investigator of 10 domestic scientific grants (APVV, VEGA). Since 2018 he is the national coordinator of the European Social Survey in Slovakia.

Sharon Coen

Dr. Sharon Coen is a Reader/Associate Professor in Media Psychology at the University of Salford. Dr. Coen's research primarily focuses on media communication, journalism, and new media, and their role in shaping political and social issues. She has a keen interest in applying media psychology to promote action aimed at minimizing the impact of climate change and addressing the climate emergency. In addition, she has a keen interest in research integrity and open science. As such, she is the Local Network Lead of the UK Reproducibility Network at Salford University, and is a UKRN representative in CoARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment)'s Reforming Academic Career Assessment working group.


Marcello Gallucci

Prof. Marcello Gallucci is a professor of Psychometrics at the University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy). He specialized in statistics, psychometrics and methodology, enjoying several collaborations with international colleagues for whom he helps planning the methodology and analyzing the data. In his carrier he has taught on a regular base several statistical courses at undergraduate and graduate levels in Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, and Austria. He has also worked in the development of statistical software, in particular he is actively involved in the development of several modules of jamovi and R statistical software.

 Keynote Speakers

Anna Kende

Anna Kende is a professor of social psychology at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. In most of her research she investigates the psychological underpinnings of social change both in the area of prejudice reduction and engagement in social and political movements. She has participated and coordinated several international research projects funded by the EU, national and international organizations, mostly concerning the situation of disadvantaged groups, and Roma people in particular. 


Barbara Lášticová

Barbara Lášticová is a social psychologist and director of the Institute for Research in Social Communication. Her main areas of interest include constructions of social identities in various contexts (European integration, transnational migration), intergroup relations, and collective action. I teach political psychology at the Comenius University in Bratislava and qualitative research at the Masaryk University in Brno. I graduated from Comenius University in Bratislava (M. A. 2000, Ph.D. 2007) and Université René Descartes-Paris 5 (DEA de psychologie sociale 2001). I co-edited the volumes "The Psychology of Politically Unstable Societies" (Routledge, 2024, with Anna Kende), Politics of Collective Memory: Cultural Patterns of Commemorative Practices in Post-War Europe (Lit, 2008) and co-authored the book Constructing Slovakness in Public Space (SAV, 2009). 

Jozef Bavoľár

Jozef Bavoľár is an associate professor of psychology at the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Slovakia. His research focuses on individual differences in decision-making, mainly decision-making styles, decision-making competence, indecisiveness, and the intolerance of uncertainty. He studies mainly their associations with real-life decision outcomes, goal-striving, and mental health.


Pavol Kačmár

Pavol Kačmár, Ph.D., works at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, University of Pavol Jozef Šafárik in Košice. His research covers various topics, such as goal-directed behaviour, action crisis, and time perspective. Pavol teaches cognitive and organizational psychology, but he is also interested in statistics and open science-related topics. He is the coauthor of textbooks on basic and advanced statistical methods, as well as several articles and monographs that explore diverse research areas. Last but not least, Pavol has participated in several large-scale collaborations, and he is eager to share and discuss the challenges, perils, but also the opportunities and promises, of the wonderful journey called collaboration.

Ivan Ropovik

Ivan Ropovik has long-term research interests in various aspects of the functioning, integrity and robustness of empirical evidence in the social and behavioural sciences. In addition to meta-research, he is interested in areas of research methodology, conceptual issues in psychometrics, quantitative inference, and the synthesis of empirical evidence. He has also published a number of applied research studies, particularly in the fields of psychology and education, has been the principal investigator of several research projects, and is a member of several international scientific networks.


 Program Overview

Date 1 (Sunday) 7.July.2024

17:00 -17.30 Welcoming the participants and organizational meeting

17:30- Opening reception at a local restaurant in the city centre of Košice

 

Date 2 (Monday) 8.July.2024

9:00-10:30  Keynote, Q&A

11:00 - 12:30 Morning group workshops

12:30-14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 17:00 Afternoon group workshops

17:00 Dinner

 

Date 3 (Tuesday) 9.July.2024

9:00-10:30  Keynote, Q&A

11:00 - 12:30 Morning group workshops

12:30-14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 17:00 Afternoon group workshops

17:00 Dinner

18:00 - 19:00 Multicultural social event  

 

Date 4 (Wednesday) 10.July.2024

9:00-10:30  Keynote, Q&A

11:00 - 12:30 Morning group workshops

12:30-14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 17:00 Afternoon group workshops

17:00 Dinner

17:00 - 19:30 Playing indoor bowling

 

 

Date 5 (Thursday) 11.July.2024

9:00-10:30  Keynote, Q&A

11:00 - 12:30 Morning group workshops

12:30-14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 17:00 Afternoon group workshops

17:00 Dinner

18:00 - 19:30  Visiting the Old Town of Košice with a Tour Guide

 

Date 6 (Friday) 12.July.2024

9:00-10:30  Keynote, Q&A

11:00 - 12:30 Morning group workshops

12:30-14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 17:00 Afternoon group workshops

17:00 Dinner

 

Date 7 (Saturday) 13.July.2024

Trip to Malá Trňa (Slovak Tokaj wine tasting)

 

Date 8 (Sunday) 14.July.2024

Free day

Date 9 (Monday) 15.July.2024

 

9:00-10:30  Keynote, Q&A

11:00 - 12:30 Morning group workshops

12:30-14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 17:00 Afternoon group workshops

17:00 Dinner

 

Date 10 (Tuesday) 16.July.2024

9:00-10:30  Keynote, Q&A

11:00 - 12:30 Morning group workshops

12:30-14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 17:00 Afternoon group workshops

17:00 Dinner

17:00 - 19:30 Visit to the botanical garden and Botanic cafe

 

 

Date 11 (Wednesday) 17.July.2024

9:00-10:30  Keynote, Q&A

11:00 - 12:30 Morning group workshops

12:30-14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 17:00 Afternoon group workshops

17:00 - Dinner

 

Date 12 (Thursday) 18.July.2024

9:00-10:30  Keynote, Q&A

11:00 - 12:30 Morning group workshops

12:30-14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 17:00 Afternoon group workshops

17:00 Dinner

17:00 - 19:30 Visiting the East Slovak Museum and finding the Golden Treasure

 

Date 13 (Friday) 19.July.2024

9:00-10:30  Keynote, Q&A

11:00 - 12:30 Morning group workshops

12:30-14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 18:00 Plenary

19:00 onwards Farewell dinner for everyone

 

Date 14 (Saturday) 20.July.2024

Departure of participants

 


The Hosting Institutes

Institute of Social Sciences of the Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences Slovak Academy of Sciences, Košice

The Institute of Social Sciences, housed within the Centre of Social and Psychological Sciences (CSPS) at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, is dedicated to conducting valuable research in the interdisciplinary fields of social sciences and humanities. Since its establishment in Košice in 1975, the Institute has been committed to evolving research areas, with a special focus on comprehending socio-cultural and socio-political processes in the Central European context. Key research domains include social psychology and history, with a particular interest in recent history and understanding the experiences of ethnic minorities in Slovakia and neighboring countries.

Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice

Pavol Jozef Šafárik University was established in 1959 as the second classical University in Slovakia. The current structure of  P. J. Šafárik University includes five faculties – Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Science, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Public Administration and Faculty of Arts. At our University more than 7 500 students are studying.

The Department of Psychology has accreditation for bachelor's and master's education in the field of psychology, as well as doctoral education in the field of social psychology and work psychology. In the pedagogical field, the main focus of the workplace is the high-quality training of future professional psychologists. Research activities at the department are diverse and reflect the focus and scientific orientation of its individual members. The dominant areas of research include e.g. goals and goal-oriented behavior; decision making; theory of psychodiagnostics; developmental psychology; psychology of creativity, especially its identification and development in the school environment and the like.

Košice, Slovakia

Košice has been an important multicultural and multiethnic city, serving as a meeting point for people from different regions. The city is situated near the borders of Hungary (20 km), Ukraine (80 km), and Poland (90 km), at the crossroads of historical trade routes. Today, it is home to 230 thousand people. The cultural life in Košice is rich, especially from May until October when several events create a charming atmosphere. Every year, on the 7th of May, the town celebrates the awarding of the first coat of arms, bestowed by the king in 1369. The first Sunday in October is dedicated to the famous event of the International Peace Marathon – the oldest in Europe.

 

The historic core of the town is the largest urban conservation area in Slovakia. The dominant feature of the city is the monumental Gothic St. Elizabeth Cathedral, the largest church in Slovakia and the symbol of the city. Within walking distance, visitors can explore the historic Town Hall, the National Theatre, the remains of the medieval fortifications of the city, and much more. A stroll can be completed in one of the cafés or pubs, which in summer attract visitors to their summer terraces right on the street.

Photos and text by Patrícia Fogelová, Institute of Social Sciences, Centre for Psychological and Social Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences, researcher - historian.

 Accommodation

Accommodation during the summer school will take place at Hotel Yasmin. The hotel is a walking distance from the University Venue and the town center. The accommodation includes breakfasts.

Sponsors

 Important Dates

February 29th 2024: Deadline for submitting applications (end of the day)

Mid-March 2024: Decisions regarding acceptance - UPDATE: Decisions have been been communicated (22/03/2024)

May 1st 2024: Payment of fees for participation in the Summer School

May 15th 2024: Distribution of the list of articles that participants should read before the Summer School.


 CONTACT

If you have any questions regarding the summer school and/or application procedure, you can contact Jana or Yasin through easpsummerschool2024@gmail.com


Visa information: If you need a visa to enter Slovakia, please get in touch with us asap - we can provide a letter for the visa application!