Katarina Pettersson (Principal Investigator)
PI Katarina Pettersson (DSocSci, docent) is an assistant professor in social psychology at the University of Helsinki, where she is co-leader of a research group of social psychologists studying ethnic relations. Apart from interethnic relations, her research interests include political communication, right-wing populism and anti-gender movements, racist and misogynist hate speech, and polarization. She has studied these topics from the perspectives of social identity theory and critical discursive psychology and is keen on applying interdisciplinary and multimodal approaches in her research. She is lead editor of the book The far-right discourse of multiculturalism in intergroup interactions: A critical discursive perspective (2022, Palgrave Macmillan). Katarina leads the MOSH project in collaboration with Leikas and Lönnqvist and the international collaborators.
Sointu Leikas (CO-PI)
Sointu Leikas is a personality and social psychologist and a CO-PI in MOSH. She completed her PhD in personality psychology in 2010 and has worked with diverse set of psychology topics since then. Her research interests include everyday life dynamics between persons, situations and behaviors, social competence, attitudes, values, and well-being. She currently works at the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities in the University of Helsinki as a university researcher, where she participates in methodological development in the human and social sciences and serves as a methodological expert in addition to her research work. She is in the current editorial board of the journal Personality Science.
Viivi Mäkinen
Viivi Mäkinen (DSocSci) is a postdoctoral researcher with a broad interest in topics related to the social psychology of intergroup relations and a passion for research with practical implications for addressing contemporary societal issues. In her recently completed doctoral dissertation, she studied the role of social norms in attitude change among adolescents and carried out school-based interventions utilizing vicarious contact. Before joining the MOSH project, she has also studied bystanders’ intentions to confront ethnic prejudice.
Kevin Durrheim
Kevin Durrheim is Distinguished Professor in Psychology at the University of Johannesburg, where he heads the UJ Methods Lab. He is an NRF A-rated scientist and nominated member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. He is a social psychologist with a program of research related to segregation, polarization and social change. His co-authored and co-edited books include The Routledge International Handbook of Discrimination, Prejudice and Stereotyping (2021), Qualitative studies of Silence (2019), Race Trouble (2011) and Racial Encounter (2005).