Diala Hawi holds a Master's in clinical psychology from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. She has been a university psychology instructor as well as clinical psychometrician. Diala has worked in media ethics research, investigating effects of media coverage and messages on political affiliations and voting decisions. During the wars in Lebanon of 2006 and 2007, she was a volunteer relief provider and a psychosocial coordinator for a local NGO, where she organized workshops on postwar trauma, conflict resolution, dialogue, and group mediation. Diala is currently studying differences in interpretations of conflict and how perceptions of people's group relations could play long-term roles in the prevalence of prejudice and conflict. She would also like to investigate the potential effect of such factors as threat, personality, and ideologies in political affiliations and ultimately, political actions.

Manisha Gupta obtained a B.S. in Business Administration, and a B.A. in Social Welfare, from the University of California at Berkeley. She has spent the past few years conducting applied psychology work with non-profits in areas related to reducing prejudice and improving intergroup relations. Most recently, she worked as a cultural programming officer for International House in Australia, whose mission is to help increase intercultural understanding. As a team leader for Projects for Peace, Manisha helped develop a grant which is being used to help improve communication and understanding between the university and the local Aboriginal population.

Katya Migacheva studied foreign languages and cultures at Samara State Pedagogic University (Russia) and studied psychology at Indiana University-Purdue University (USA).  Katya has worked extensively with organizations promoting democratic values education in post-Soviet Russia and was one of the creators of educational programs on cultural tolerance for Jewish teenagers in Samara.  She has a keen interest in cross-cultural communication, humanistic pedagogy, democratic values, Arab-Israeli conflict, and the lessons of Holocaust.  Katya's current research concerns the facilitation of intergroup contact, trust, and tolerance in post-conflict societies.  She is also a part of a quantitative evaluation team for the Training Active Bystanders program,  implemented by the Quabbin Mediation Center, which focuses on promoting social competence and active bystandership among secondary schools in Western Massachusetts.

Thomas O’Brien received his AB in Psychology and Islamic and Near Eastern Studies from Washington University in 2009.  He conducted a senior thesis project on how reminders of historical injustice by one’s own nation affect willingness to criticize the nation. In 2008 he travelled to Tbilisi, Georgia to conduct field experiments involving memories of the Rose Revolution.  After college, Thomas interned with the International Center for Journalists in Washington D.C., and he wrote news briefs for the website Palestine Note. He is working on a longitudinal field study in middle schools on the development of cross-group friendships among ethnic minority and majority youth. He is also currently involved in program evaluation for PROOF: Media for Social Justice; their Rescuers Project exhibition, to be shown in Bosnia and Cambodia, showcases examples of individuals who have intervened in times of genocide or mass violence to rescue others.

Sven Berendes was a German DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst) Graduate exchange student from the Philipps Universität at Marburg, Germany. Sven attended UMass Amherst in Fall 2008, studying Social Psychology with a focus on Peace and Conflict studies. As a student assistant of the Social Psychology department in Marburg, he worked with Linda Tropp on intergroup conflict studies.

Adekemi (Kemi) Adesokan was a visiting student in the Psychology of Peace and Violence Program in Fall 2007. In collaboration with Dr. Linda Tropp and Dr. Rolf van Dick (University of Frankfurt), she conducted research focusing on intergroup contact among ethnic minority and majority status groups in the USA and Germany. Kemi completed her Masters degree in Psychology at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, and is now a doctoral student at Oxford Universty, UK.

Corinna Mertz was a visiting student from Fall 2007 to Spring 2008. During her stay she studied reasons for intergroup conflict and violence as well as means, e.g. intergroup contact, to improve intergroup relations. As a member of the RespectResearchGroup, she is currently working on her Master's degree in Psychology at the University of Hamburg in Germany.