Announcements

Dear ICRN members and friends, As the current chair of the ‘International Contact Research Network’ and on behalf of its executive, I write to make you aware and praise the publishing by Bloomberg’s Katherine Griffiths of a compelling, detailed, evidence-based, cross-validated, multi-source account of endemic and protracted sexual harassment and power exploitation of students and young colleagues by well-known Miles Hewstone and several other male professors at Oxford University.

Join us for our next ICRN Colloquium featuring Dr. Negusu Aklilu, who will present Building peace before the polls: Political party dialogues to prevent electoral violence in Ethiopia. Abstract: I would like to showcase a closed pre-election political dialogue we conducted in 2021, informed by intergroup contact theory and associated methodologies to address political concerns and associated emotional phenomena.

We’re excited to share an upcoming event from the Living Library in the Netherlands. On December 11, they will host an online Living Library session, followed by a symposium discussing new findings on the impact of the Living Library on both disadvantaged and advantaged groups, presented by Afreen, Julia and Fani.

We’re thrilled to announce that ICRN and the Hamburg EASP-sponsored meeting group on Advances in Intergroup Contact will be joining forces to host a joint satellite meeting on and for intergroup contact! This meeting will take place right after the EASP General Meeting (July 2026) — making it easy to attend both events.

We are excited to share that we have a new round of wonderful speakers lined up for a brand-new round of the ICRN colloquium! This includes a new section dedicated to the wishes and needs of our early postgraduate researcher community! While we are busy getting a few last details organised before we release the full list of speakers and schedule, we would like to announce that Prof.

An exciting opportunity has arisen to join a Leverhulme Trust funded project, led by Professor Rose Meleady, investigating the impact of intergroup contact on prejudice and social cohesion. The goal of the project is to use novel experience sampling methods (ESM) to capture intergroup interactions in real-time and explore their immediate impact on intergroup attitudes.

One part-time (0.5 FTE) Postdoctoral Research Fellow Position available in the School of Psychology, funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and led by Professor Fiona White. A 0.5 (FTE) Postdoctoral Research Fellow Position in Social Psychology is available to develop and evaluate a new set of ‘RESPECT against racism e-resources’ for primary school-aged children.

We invite conceptual and empirical contributions from all disciplines represented in the broad field of peace psychology and neighboring disciplines outside psychology, scholars at different career stages, and others situated in peace psychology more broadly. Submission Deadline: 22 April 2025 Location: Constructor University Bremen, Germany Travel Stipends: Limited support available for participants from low- and middle-income countries (contact organizers early).

Birkbeck, University of London, is seeking a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the project, ‘Overcoming Societal Tensions in Europe: Can Age Diverse Friendships be the Solution?’. This exciting opportunity is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and investigates how intergenerational friendships at work can foster cooperation and tolerance within Europe’s diverse society.

The British Journal of Social Psychology will issue a special issue on ‘Contact seeking, contact avoidance and the enduring challenge of segregation’, edited by a range of ICRN members (John Dixon, Stefania Paolini, Chloe Bracegirdle, Patrick Kotzur, Marie-Therese Friehs) alongside Anna Stefaniak. Both empirical and theoretical papers are welcome; abstracts should be submitted as an expression of interest by the end of March 2025.