I am a social and cultural psychologist interested on the development and social context of knowledge, social representations, community and the social psychology of public spheres. My current research focuses on how different socio-cultural contexts shape the development and transformation of knowledge, and in particular, on how different systems of knowing meet and relate in contemporary public spheres.
I have a special interest on the genetic and historical methods developed by Piaget and Vygotsky to the study of mind and on the development of dialogical perspectives to the study of knowledge in context.
My overall project, present in my teaching, research and applied work, is firmly grounded on the idea of psychology as a societal and cultural science.
I direct the MSc in Social and Cultural Psychology and with an enthusiastic and dedicated group of PhD students and colleagues I run the LSE Social Representations Group.
Click here| to view the Underground Sociabilities research page
I have been educated in Brazil and the UK. I trained as a clinical social psychologist at the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (PUC-RS), where I received my BSc, License (Licenciatura) and MSc degrees in Psychology. I lectured there until coming to the LSE in the early 90s to conduct research towards a PhD. I joined the Institute of Social Psychology in 1995 and since then the LSE has become my intellectual home.
I have been always intrigued and fascinated by how social and cultural contexts shape the types of being we are. Having grown up and spent my formative years in Brazil, a country marked by sharp social disparities and an amazing combination of peoples and cultures, I wanted to understand better how these contextual elements shape the psychology of individuals and communities. As most psychologists of my generation in Brazil I have been deeply concerned with the uses of psychology in social settings and with how psychology can contribute to alleviate social inequalities.
I spent the late 80s teaching at the Institute of Psychology of PUC-RS and working as a clinical social psychologist on primary mental health care with deprived communities and towards the de-institutionalization of people with mental illness. Working and researching in psychiatric settings and deprived communities increased my appreciation of the limitations of a purely traditional clinical approach as the answer to the urgent needs of excluded populations. I became interested in social and cultural psychology, convinced of the need for developing academic work towards a new psychology and never looked back.
http://www.ccs.saude.gov.br/#|
Today I continue to work towards the development of a societal and cultural psychology and am convinced that psychology must occupy a firm place among the social sciences.The life of the mind is socially produced and historically situated.
Click here to know more about the public lecture series Psychology as Social Science.
I am co-editor of the Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology|, direct a book series on Contemporary Social Psychology for the Brazilian publishing house Vozes and sit in the editorial board of the European Journal of Social Psychology and Psicologia e Sociedade . I have held a professorial appointment at the Maison de Sciences de l'Homme and under the auspices of CNPq (Brazilian National Council for Science and Technology) teach regularly in Brazil as a Visiting Professor. I continue to have strong links with Brazil, both through my research and teaching, working closely with colleagues at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.
Research
My research is both theoretical and applied. It focuses on the interrelations between knowledge and social and cultural contexts. My approach to the study of knowledge in context is based on the theory of social representations and socio-cultural theories of mind and action. Central to my thinking have been the influences of Piaget, Vygotsky, Freud, Moscovici, Freire and Habermas. My empirical projects, both present and past have been informed and at the same time helped to form this approach.
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social representations: context and development
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the social psychology of communities and public spheres
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participation, citizenship and social change
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inter-cultural dialogue.
Click |here| to read the Introduction of my new book Knowledge in Context: Representations, community and culture, Routledge, 2007.
Click on the books below to read more or purchase
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Projects
Underground sociabilities: identity, culture and resistance in marginalised communities
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Funded by Itaú Social Foundation| in Brazil, this project investigates how grassroots cultural groups in Brazilian favelas use art and local knowledge as resources to fight off marginalisation and establish a dialogue with the mainstream societal order that excludes them. We are exploring forms of sociability that remain invisible and underground in relation to mainstream societies, with a focus on how alternative routes of integration and socialisation are developed by communities living in conditions of extreme social exclusion and deprivation. The project involves a collaborative partnership between LSE, Afroreggae|, CUFA|, Itaú Cultural|, Itaú Social|, UNESCO| as well as the institutional support of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro|.
Our objectives are:
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To investigate the extent to which alternative sociabilities are generative and transformative of conditions of marginalisation and exclusion;
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To compare the experience of sociabilities that "work" and generate community transformation through culture, art, and music and sociabilities that "do not work" and generate violence, exclusion and death;
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To further our understanding of knowledge in context and the dynamics of dialogues between different communities and forms of knowing;
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To construct "best practice" indicators of regenerative experiences involved in the dynamics of underground sociabilities;
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To theorise the experience developed in Brazil by Afroreggae and Cufa and develop guidelines that can inform other contexts and cultures exposed to similar conditions.
To know more about Afroreggae and Cufa in Brazil go to:
http://www.afroreggae.org.br/|
http://www.favelatotheworld.org/|
http://www.cufa.com.br/06/index.php|
Children and the public sphere
This project is researching how young children, in different countries, represent community and public worlds. It is mapping how different social and cultural milieus and different age groups shape the trajectory from subjective to inter-subjective and external worlds that characterise the development of children. One of the key aims of the project is to construct an international data base of children's drawings and verbal constructions about the public sphere. Data collection has taken place in Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Romania and Lebanon with field work in the UK planned to start soon. Some of the questions the project is trying to answer are:
To which extend different cultures influence the development of children's knowledge about the public world?
Do different cultures and social milieus influence the content of children's knowledge about community and the public world?
Click here to see some of the pictures young children are producing about their public worlds.
Historical trajectories and national identities: a social psychological approach
This is a pan-European project co-ordinated by Professor Janos Lazlo at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. It involves collaboration between social psychologists, linguists and historians in 12 European countries. We are exploring how historical representations and constructions of the past shape the formation of identities and the dynamic of inter-group relations both within and across national borders. Funded by the European Science Foundation, the project is allowing scholars to meet and elaborate a research proposal to pursue key theoretical and empirical questions. We aim:
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To establish what representations of the past are available to different populations-countries across Europe
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To contribute to understanding how representations of the past are collectively elaborated and remembered and the role of different sources such as school, family and national celebrations in transmitting historical trajectories.
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To explore how representations of the past provide historical charters (myths of foundation) through which different European groups make sense of the present and from which they draw resources for identification
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To provide insight into how social emotions such as guilt, shame and regret operate in the formation of identity and elaboration of the past.
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To illuminate the role of representations of the past on present inter-group relations and attitude towards out-groups.
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To contribute to processes of integration and reconciliation that can cope with similarities and differences and expand our understanding of the obstacles and potentialities involved in the dynamics of constructing an European identity.
Click here to see my address to the VIII International Conference in Social Representations, in Rome, 2006, on History and Representation.
Teaching
I direct the MSc in Social and Cultural Psychology and convene its core course PS400 Contemporary Social and Cultural Psychology. I also teach in all the core courses of our other three MSc programmes Organisational and Social Psychology, Social and Public Communication and Health Community and Development. In the Lent Term I run two half-unit courses on Representations, Institutions and Communities (PS437), and with Caroline Howarth, Social Representations (PS410).
I love to teach and consider a real privilege to have the opportunity of meeting the exceptional students who come to the LSE. I was quite thrilled when I received the LSE Teaching Prize, for outstanding teaching performance. Teaching keeps my research and intellectual concerns alive and it is thanks to my students that I have managed to clarify a great deal of my ideas!
I supervise PhD students in a variety of fields of research in social and cultural psychology, including social representations, community, social change, health, the social psychology of public spheres, the socio-cognitive development of knowledge, children's representations, dialogue and perspective-taking. I expect my PhD students to engage with my research interests and to become active members of our research environment.
Some of my PhD students present and past.
Vlad Glaveanu
Shira Keshet
Jacqueline Priego-Hernnandez
Alicia Renedo-Uduondo
Celine Righi
Gordon Sammut
Visit my former student Asi Sharabi|'s blog to read his thesis on perspective-taking. It is a beautiful piece of work, which received the LSE Mackenzie Prize for best performance and the Michael Young prize, conferred by the ESRC for pieces of work that can best translate into practices for alleviating social suffering and inequalities.
For downloading my publications go to LSE Research Online|
Monographs:
Jovchelovitch, S. (2007) Knowledge in Context: Representation, community and culture. London: Routledge. Click to read|
Books
Jovchelovitch, S. (2007) Reflections on the diversity of Knowledge: Power and dialogue in representational fields. In T. Sugiman, K. Gergen, and W. Wagner (Eds) Meaning in Action. Tokyo: Springer Verlag
Jovchelovitch, S. (2000) Representações Sociais e Espaço Público: A construção simbólica dos espaços públicos no Brasil, [Social Representations and Public Life: The symbolic construction of public spaces in Brazil], Petrópolis: Vozes.
Gervais, M-C and Jovchelovitch, S. (1998) The Health Beliefs of the Chinese Community in England. London: Health Education Authority.
Guareschi, P.A. and Jovchelovitch, S. (1994) Textos em Representações Sociais, [Texts on Social Representations], Petrópolis: Vozes. (12th reprint 2005).
Refereed Articles
Jovchelovitch, S. (2008) Rehabilitating common sense: knowledge, representations and everyday life. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 38 (4), 431-448.
Marková, I. and Jovchelovitch, S. (2008) Special Issue on Psychoanalysis, its image and its public. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 38 (4). (Guest Editor with Ivana Marková).
Jovchelovitch, S. (2008) Trust and social representations: Understanding the relations between self and other in the Brazilian public sphere. In I. Markova and A. Gillespie (Eds) Trust and Distrust: Sociocultural Perspectives. Greenwich, CT: New Information Age Publishing, Inc.
Renedo, A. and Jovchelovitch, S. (2007) Expert knowledge, cognitive polyphasia and health. Journal of Health Psychology. 12 (5):779-790.
Book Chapters
Jovchelovitch, S. (2008) Trust and social representations: Understanding the relations between self and other in the Brazilian public sphere. In I. Markova and A. Gillespie (Eds) Trust and Distrust: Sociocultural Perspectives. Greenwich, CT: New Information Age Publishing, Inc.
Jovchelovitch, S. (2008) Living to tell the story: Narrative, history and representations in László's psychology of stories. In O. Vincze and S. Bigazzi (Eds) Élmény, Történet – A történetek élménye. (pp. 24-31) Busdapest: Új Mandátum Könyvkiadó.
Jovchelovitch, S. (2007) Reflections on the diversity of Knowledge: Power and dialogue in representational fields. In T. Sugiman, K. Gergen, and W. Wagner (Eds) Meaning in Action. Tokyo: Springer Verlag.
Papers
Jovchelovitch, S. (2006) Repenser la diversité de la connaissance: polyphasie cognitive, croyances et representations. In V. Hass (Ed.) Les Savois du quotidian. Transmission, appropriations, representations. Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
Jovchelovitch, S. (2005) La fonction symbolique et la construction des representations: la dynamique communcationnelle ego/alter/object, [The symbolic function and the making of representation: Understanding the communicative dynamic between self-other-object], Hermés 41: 51-57.
Jovchelovitch, S. (2004) Psicologia Social : Saber, comunidade e cultura. Psicologia e Sociedade 16, 2: 20-31.
Jovchelovitch, S. (2004) Contextualiser les focus groups: comprendre groupes et cultures dans la recherche sur le représentations. Bulletin de Psychologie 57, 3: 245-252.
Jovchelovitch, S. (2004) Participation, health and the development of community resources in Southern Brazil. Journal of Health Psychology 9, 2: 311-322. (with P.A. Guareschi)
Miscellaneous and Book Reviews
AfroBrazilians: Cultural Production in a Racial Democracy. Niyi Afolabi. Rochester,NY: University of Rochester Press. In Nations and Nationalism. (forthcoming)
Doesn't Everyone?Exploring GroupThink Analysis, BBC Radio 4, 22nd June 2009, retrievable at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/analysis/8113450.stm|
The Psychology of Class, New Statesman, 1st October 2007, retrievable at http://www.newstatesman.com/writers/sandra_jovchelovitch|
Not only of science is made the life of an academic. I love spending time with my family and friends and am devoted to reading fiction, to music and baking. Since coming to the UK I became a very keen gardener, something that shows just how far a cultural context can shape motivations, interests and being – as a Brazilian I just took for granted that everything grows and is very lush. In any case the clematis almost took over our shed this spring (see below)!
Now my mixed cultural identity led me to appreciate the pains and pleasures, as well as the necessity, of weeding, tending and pruning! And so I have embarked in a great adventure of perusing friend's allotments and gardens, early morning plant markets and pottering around with family and friends through the seasons of the gardening year.
