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Departmental Seminar Series

Weekly seminar for the LSE community

Recent topics of discussion include:

  • Influence of misinformation
  • Emotion and health
  • The future of work
  • The role of politics in online dating 
  • Why telling people to find their passion is bad advice
  • Climate justice perceptions around the world

About the seminar series

The Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at LSE hosts a term-time seminar series, inviting researchers to present their latest findings.

The series is particularly beneficial for LSE students and early career researchers as it presents the opportunity to discuss and debate new findings in social psychology and behavioural science in a small, open setting.

How to join a seminar

The Departmental Seminar Series is open to all LSE staff and students. 

Seminars will normally take place on Wednesdays at 12-1pm during term time. This year the series will take place in a hybrid format - both in-person and online - unless specified.

All details, including speaker information, title and abstract, location and Zoom link will be sent via email each week from the PBS Events team pbs.events@lse.ac.uk. Please refer to this email for any changes to schedule and confirmation on the format. If you are a member of LSE staff or a student from outside the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, please email pbs.events@lse.ac.uk to join the mailing list.

Speakers 2024/25

Autumn Term

  • Wednesday 9 October 2024
    Dr Ilka Gleibs, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE 
    Title: 'A social identity approach to crisis leadership'
  • Wednesday 16 October 2024
    Dr Edoardo Zulato, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE 
    Title: 'Re-shaping pasts and futures to make sense of suspended present: The case of vegetative state patients'
  • Wednesday 23 October 2024
    Dr Sakshi Ghai, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE
    Title: 'Rethinking sample diversity in research design'
  • Wednesday 30 October 2024
    Dr Dana Harari, Israel Institute of Technology
    Title: 'I didn’t ask for ChatGPT’s help: How AI anticipatory help increases threat and decreases AI utilization'
  • Wednesday 13 November 2024
    Dr Ashley Whillans, Harvard Business School 
    Title: 'The Buy-In Effect: When Increasing Initial Effort Motivates Behavioral Follow-Through'
  • Wednesday 20 November 2024
    Professor Fabio Tufano, University of Leicester 
    Title: 'How Social Relationships Affect Group Cooperation: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Real Groups'
  • Wednesday 27 November 2024
    Professor Dr Rolf van Dick, University of Frankfurt
  • Wednesday 4 December 2024
    Dr David Kaposi, The Open University
  • Wednesday 11 December 2024
    Dr Joshua Becker, UCL 

Winter Term

Past speakers

2023/24

Autumn Term

  • Dr Bouke Klein Teeselink, King's College London
    Title: “Discounts Shift the Demand Curve: Evidence from Life-Saving Medications”
  • Dr George Melios, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE
    Title: '"Sleeping with the enemy": The role of politics in online dating' 
  • Dr Nicole Redvers, Western University
    Title: "Indigenous Reflections on Land-based Research Methodologies"
  • Professor Paul O’Keefe, University of Exeter Business School
    Title: "Why Telling People to Find Their Passion is Bad Advice"
  • Dr Alina Velias, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, PBS
    Title: "Measuring beliefs, knowledge, and preferences"
  • Dr Adriana Monago, University of California Santa Cruz
    Title: "Adolescents as Agents of Cultural Change and Continuity through their use of Social Media" 
  • Dr Adam Harris, UCL
    Title: "The prevalence & consequences of the severity effect in probability communication"

Winter Term

  • Dr Lee de Wit, University of Cambridge
    Title: "The political psychology of false polarization and real polarization around the cultural axis"
  • Dr Andreas Kotsadam, University of Oslo 
    Title: "The Social Transmission of Support for Authoritarian Rule: Evidence from Field and Survey Experiments"
  • Dr Charles Ogunbode, University of Nottingham
    Title: "Climate justice perceptions around the world"
  • Dr Lauren Howe, University of Zurich
    Title: "Does playing up one's humanity pay off for leaders?"
  • Dr Will M Gervais, Brunel University
    Title: "Atheism as a Testing Ground For Theories of Religion"
  • Dr Catherine Thomas, University of Michigan
    Title: "Culturally Wise Interventions and Their Influence on Meaning Making and Behavior Across Diverse Cultural Contexts"
  • Dr Anne Templeton, University of Edinburgh
    Title: "Trying to understand how and why the public respond to safety guidance in emergencies – emphasis on the trying"
  • Dr Ekaterina Oparina, LSE
    Title: "Talking Therapy: Impacts of a Nationwide Mental Health Service in England" 
  • Professor Constantine Sedikides, University of Southampton
    Title: "To Be Truthful or to Be Wonderful? The Rocky Road to Self-Knowledge"

Spring Term Bonus Seminars

  • Professor Michelle Ryan, Australian National University
    Title: "To Advance Gender Equality, Use the Evidence"
  • Dr Mai Albzour, Birzeit University 
    Title: "Portraying Palestine in the Social Psychology of Prejudice and Reconciliation - On Imposing Moral Guidelines on Oppressed Groups with Technical Concepts"

2022/23

Previous years 


  • Vanessa Bohns, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior, Cornell University
  • Patrick Humphreys, Emeritus Professor, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE
  • Margaret Samahita, Assistant Professor at the School of Economics, University College Dublin and a Research Fellow at the Geary Institute for Public Policy
  • Laura M. Giurge, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE
  • June Gruber, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado, Boulder
  • Ullrich Ecker, University of Western Australia
  • Moshe Hoffman, Research Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and Lecturer at Harvard's Department of Economics. 
  • Renata Bongiorno, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter
  • Kristian Nielsen, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge
  • Umberto Castiello, University of Padova, Principle Investigator, NEMO Laboratory
  • Amanda Williams (IMD)
  • Gregg Sparkman, Princeton University
  • Sander van der Linden, University of Cambridge
  • Shahzeen Attari, Indiana University Bloomington
  • Gordon Flett, York University Canada
  • Charless Efferson, University of Lausanne
  • Patrick Hoggard, UCL
  • Daniel Nettle, Newcastle University
  • Aiyana Willard, Brunel
  • Armin Falk, University of Bonn
  • Rex Wright, University of North Texas
  • Reto Odermatt, University of Basel
  • Thomas Graeber, Harvard University