Announcements

The ICRN Summit will take place from 5–7 July 2026 at the FernUniversität Campus Centre in Karlsruhe, Germany, in a hybrid format, as a post-conference meeting of the EASP General Meeting. The core ICRN programme will run from Sunday afternoon, 2.30 pm, to Monday afternoon, 4.00 pm, with online participation options available for most sessions.

We are looking for a highly motivated student interested in human–animal relations and interdisciplinary research for a funded MSc(Res) degree at the School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews. You will be working on a project that investigates how different modes of communicating animals’ emotional and cognitive capacities and witnessing human-animal contact can reshape public perceptions of animal minds and promote more positive attitudes toward animals.

To coincide with this year’s ICRN summit 5-7 July 2026, we are launching a competition to design a new logo for our rapidly growing research group. If you have a keen eye for design or background in this area, we’d be thrilled to receive your ideas. Brief: A colour visual that represents the ICRN values and mission (see below).

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Post-doctoral Researcher to join Rose Meleady’s Leverhulme Trust-funded research at the UEA School of Psychology. The project examines how intergroup contact shapes prejudice and social cohesion, using experience sampling methods. The postholder will design and program experience sampling studies, coordinate data collection, analyse data using multi-level modelling, and contribute to dissemination and impact work.

February 2026 edition: announcing the joint ICRN & Hamburg Group meeting on intergroup contact (5–6 July 2026, Karlsruhe), upcoming Contact Colloquium talks, recruitment for a voluntary Social Media Officer, and recent member publications. Read the full newsletter

We are inviting expressions of interest for the voluntary role of Social Media Officer, who will also join our Executive Committee at the International Contact Research Network (ICRN). This is an opportunity to help shape how we communicate and connect as an international research community while gaining experience in research communication and digital engagement.

Join us for our next ICRN Colloquium featuring Prof Rose Meleady from the University of East Anglia who will present Stable People, Stable Contexts, Stable Attitudes? Contact Effects Reconsidered. Abstract: Intergroup contact is widely assumed to reduce prejudice by changing individuals over time. Yet recent research has raised questions about whether routine, everyday contact actually produces meaningful change within individuals.

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.