Katarina Pettersson is Assistant Professor of Social Psychology and Academy Research Fellow (2025–2029) at the University of Helsinki. Her research examines political rhetoric, gendered ideologies, right-wing populism, and online hate, with a particular focus on how polarization and exclusion are produced and contested in public and digital discourse. Methodologically, her work draws on critical discursive, rhetorical, and multimodal approaches to analyze how social inequalities are legitimized and resisted in everyday and institutional contexts.
Katarina leads the Research Council of Finland–funded YOPO project, which examines how gender polarization among young people is produced, intensified, and challenged across social, educational, and digital contexts. The project uses both interview and online data and combines critical discursive, rhetorical, and multimodal approaches to understand how polarizing narratives circulate, how they resonate with young people’s lived experiences, and how they affect democratic participation and social inclusion. In addition to YOPO, she is the principal investigator of the MOSH project on urban micro-segregation, which explores how everyday spatial practices contribute to social division and inequality.
Zea Szebeni
Zea Szebeni is a social psychologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. Her research examines contested knowledge in the digital age, with a focus on how narratives gain or lose legitimacy and who holds authority over collective stories. She has studied disinformation dynamics and epistemic ownership in Hungary and Finland, and her current work extends to questions of gendered grievance, victimhood, and polarization. Her methodological approach combines qualitative and quantitative methods, and she is particularly interested in how online spaces shape meaning-making around identity and belonging.
Anna Kende is a professor of Social Psychology and the Director of the Institute of Psychology at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest. Her research focuses on the topic of intergroup relations from a social identity perspective. She investigates the psychological underpinnings of social change both in the area of prejudice reduction and engagement in social movements, volunteerism and intergroup solidarity. She has conducted a number of research projects concerning anti-Gypsyism, anti-Semitism, gender relations, and attitudes toward refugees and immigrants, mainly focusing on the region of East-Central Europe. Her work covers both basic and applied research, which she has published in leading international journals. In 2023, she received the Nevitt Sanford Award for Outstanding Professional Contributions to Political Psychology from the International Society of Political Psychology.
Eevi Tiihonen is a master's student in Social Psychology at the University of Helsinki and works in the YOPO project as a Research Assistant. She is conducting her master's thesis as part of the project as she is interested in political topics and critical social psychology.
Anni Honkaniemi is a master's student in Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki. Prior to her current degree, she did her Bachelor's in Geography and International Development at the University of Sussex. Her academic interests include gender dynamics, global politics, and sustainable development. She is working on her master's thesis on anti-gender and climate backlash while working on the YOPO project as a Research Assistant.