Johanna Ray Vollhardt holds a Diplom (equivalent to a Master’s) in Psychology from the University of Cologne, Germany) and received a Ph.D. in Spring 2009 through our program.

She is currently as Associate Professor of Psychology at Clark University, where she also directs the Social Psychology Ph.D. program, and is an affiliated faculty member of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Her research has focused on collective victimhood, including the differences between inclusive and exclusive victim consciousness and their consequences for intergroup relations, effects of acknowledgment versus denial of genocide and other forms of group-based violence on members of the victim group, and resistance during genocide.

Johanna was an intern with La Benevolencija's Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo reconciliation radio programs in 2005-2006 and worked with this NGO for a decade. In 2009, Johanna Ray Vollhardt was awarded the Gert Sommer Award for Peace Psychology and in 2010 the ISPP Best Dissertation Award. She is the co-founding co-editor of the Journal of Social and Political Psychology and has served on the Governing Council of the International Society for Political Psychology (ISPP). She was recently elected as Vice President of ISPP for a three-year term (2017-2020).