Past Visiting Scholars

David Butz

Morehead State University, United States

Dr. Butz examines the psychological factors that lead people to approach or avoid intergroup contact with a particular emphasis on understanding the causes of negative approach-related responses, such as intergroup anger, hostility, and blame. In collaboration with Dr. Tropp and researchers at Queens University, Belfast, he studies sources of avoidance and hostility in interactions between religious and political communities in Northern Ireland and approaches to promote trust between the communities.

Dr. Butz also examines environmental factors that enter into decisions to approach or avoid intergroup contact, focusing on the implications of identity cues and symbols for reducing intergroup conflict and improving the quality of intergroup relations. In future work he will be expanding upon his research by examining a variety of approaches to promote interest in intergroup contact and trust between groups. He is also planning on extending his work on identity symbols by considering the situations and motivations that lead people to display overt symbols of their identity. Dr. Butz has taken the position of Assistant Professor of Psychology at Morehead State University, Morehead, KY.

Photo: Dr. David Butz

Ed Cairns

University of Ulster, Ireland

Ed Cairns (deceased) taught psychology at the University of Ulster and was a visiting scholar at the Universities of Florida, Cape Town, and Melbourne.

Most of his work had investigated the psychological aspects of political violence in relation to conflict in Northern Ireland. He was a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a past President of the Division of Peace Psychology of the APA.

Photo: www2.ulster.ac.uk/staff/e.cairns.htm

Donald G. Ellis

University of Hartford, United States

Donald G. Ellis is a Professor in the School of Communication at the University of Hartford.

His Ph.D. is from the University of Utah where he began his work on conflict and group processes. He has also been on the faculty of Purdue University and Michigan State University. His research interests are in the area of language and communication theory with particular emphasis on communication practices between ethnic groups in conflict. His work seeks to examine the relationship between micro linguistic and interaction processes and macro social and communicative categories such as culture, ethnicity, and dialogue.

He is currently involved in research pertaining to dialogue groups between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians. Dr. Ellis is the past editor of the journal Communication Theory and the author of numerous journal articles. His books include Contemporary Issues in Discourse Processes, Small Group Decision Making, From Language to Communication, and Crafting Society Ethnicity, Class and Communication Theory. He also works in his home community with dispute resolution organizations.

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

University of Capetown, South Africa

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Cape Town and award-winning author of the book, A Human Being Died That Night: A Story of Forgiveness.

She served on the Human Rights Violations Committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), where her interest in the relationship between perpetrators' expressions of remorseful apologies and victims' response of forgiveness began. Since serving on the TRC, she has been engaged in the study of forgiveness in the aftermath of mass atrocity, with a focus on post-apartheid dialogue encounters between victim/survivors and perpetrators in the South African context.

This work has led to her current research, which examines the web of feelings, traumatic memories, guilt, and the transformative shifts that open up the possibility of empathy in the dialogue between victims and perpetrators after mass violence. Her other books include a co-authored publication, Narrating our Healing: Perspectives on Healing Trauma (2007) and Memory, Narrative and Forgiveness: Perspectives on Unfinished Journeys of the Past (co-editor, 2009).

Photo: Truth and Reconciliation chair Desmond Tutu (L) and committee member Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela at the TRC hearings. Permission: IRIS FILMS, www.irisfilms.org

Roberto González Gutiérrez

Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile

Roberto González Gutiérrez is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Pontificia Universidad Católica in Santiago, Chile.

He has specialized in the field of social psychology, psychology and politics of educational measurement in general. His research in the area of social psychology has focused on the study of intergroup relations and the development of attitudes towards political, religious, ethnic, disabled, immigrants and other minority groups in general. He has placed special emphasis on factors that moderate and reduce prejudice and social discrimination (intergroup contact, social norms, social identity, group membership, intergroup friendship among others).

 In the field of political psychology has studied the psychological processes associated with socialization, formation of attitudes and political culture and the issue of political identity and intergroup attitudes in political parties and coalitions. Finally, he has consulted in developing educational measurement instruments (Docentemás, AEP, INICIA), among other program links to policy development on Education in Chile. He is currently a co-director of the Measurement Center at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, MIDE UC.

Photo: Roberto Gonzales Gutierrez, puc.cl/ficha_profesor.php?idProfesor=23

Mariska Kappmeier

University of Hamburg, Germany

Mariska Kappmeier (2009-2010) holds a diploma in Psychology and is visiting lecturer at the University of Hamburg, Germany and has been a Visiting Researcher here at UMASS and at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, USA.

Her teaching and research focus lies on ‘intercultural conflict facilitation and intercultural competences’. This concerns how interpersonal conflicts can be based upon differences in interests as well as in cultural differences based on the cognitions, emotions, behaviors and values of the parties involved.

Photo: Mariska Kappmeier, www1.uni-hamburg.de

Herbert C. Kelman

Harvard University, United States

Herbert C. Kelman is the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Emeritus, at Harvard University and was (from 1993 to 2003) Director of the Program on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution at Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Yale University in 1951. He is past president of the International Studies Association, the International Society of Political Psychology, the Interamerican Society of Psychology, and several other professional associations.

He is recipient of many awards, including the Socio-Psychological Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1956), the Kurt Lewin Memorial award (1973), the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest (1981), the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order (1997), and the Austrian Medal of Honor for Science and Art First Class (1998).

His major publications include International Behavior: A Social-Psychological Analysis (editor; 1965), A Time to Speak: On Human Values and Social Research (1968), and Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility (with V. Lee Hamilton; 1989). He has been engaged for many years in the development of interactive problem solving, an unofficial third party approach to the resolution of international and intercommunal conflicts, and in its application to the Arab-Israeli conflict, with special emphasis on its Israeli-Palestinian component.

From left to right: Dr. Ervin Staub and Dr. Herbert Kelman

Jorge Manzi

Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile

Jorge Manzi is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Measurement in the School of Psychology at Pontificia Universidad Católica in Santiago, Chile.

His research in social psychology concentrates on political phenomena, including such diverse themes as the development of political ideas and affiliations among youth, collective memory for political events, and the role of emotions in processes of reconciliation. Currently, he is conducting a large-scale panel study to examine aspects of political culture among three generations of Chileans.

Photo: Jorge Manzi, puc.cl/ficha_profesor.php?idProfesor=23

Thomas Pettigrew

University of California, Santa Cruz, United States

Thomas F. Pettigrew is currently a Research Professor of Social Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Professor Pettigrew has also taught at the Universities of North Carolina (1956-1957), Harvard (1957-1980), and Amsterdam (1986-1991). In addition, in 2001 he was a Senior Fellow at the Research Institute for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.

Professor Pettigrew has been at the forefront of research on racial prejudice for a half-century. An expert on black-white relations in the United States, he has also conducted intergroup research in Australia, Europe, and South Africa. He served as President of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues in 1967-1968 and later received the Society's Kurt Lewin Award and twice the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize. Other national awards include the Sydney Spivack Award for Race Relations Research from the American Sociological Association (1979), the 2002 Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology), a Senior Fulbright Fellowship (2003-2004), and the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Academy for Intercultural Research. In 2008, he received an honorary doctorate from Philipps University in Marburg, Germany.

Photo: pettigrew.socialpsychology.org

Özden Melis Ulug

With a BSc major in Psychology and a BA minor in Studies in Politics from Middle East Technical University in Turkey, Melis received her MSc degree in Political Psychology with distinction from Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland in 2011 and her PhD degree in Psychology from Jacobs University Bremen in Germany in 2016. She focused on the socially shared conflict understandings among different segments of society (e.g., politicians, scholars and journalists, and lay people) in the context of the Kurdish conflict in Turkey. She has also conducted follow-up studies in order to understand the role of intergroup contact in different status groups on conflict understandings and peace-related outcomes, such as attitudes toward reconciliation and peace.


In addition to intergroup conflict, reconciliation and peace, her research interests also include collective action and solidarity between disadvantaged groups. Melis has recently conducted both qualitative and quantitative studies on protestors’ motivations and their solidarity experiences in the context of Gezi Park protests in 2013 in Turkey. She expects to conduct more research on how disadvantaged groups such as women and Blacks experience contact with the advantaged groups in the context of protests and activism in the US.

Dr. Özden Melis Ulug's CV

Ulrich Wagner

Philipps University Marburg, Germany

Ulrich Wagner is a Professor of Social Psychology at Philipps University Marburg, Germany. He is Director of the Center for Conflict Studies and Speaker of the Ph.D. Graduate School.

Dr. Wagner studied psychology at Ruhr-University Bochum and finished his Ph.D. as well as his postdoctoral thesis there under the supervision of Peter Schönbach.

Dr. Wagner's research focuses mainly on intergroup relations. He has published extensively on intergroup relations in organizations. His main field of interests, however, is ethnic intergroup relations, especially intergroup contact and behavioral consequences of prejudice. In his recent research he successively began to focus on the role of intergroup emotions and is working on a meta-analytic evaluation of programs developed to prevent prejudice and hate crimes

Hanne Watkins

Hanne M. Watkins holds a BA (Hons.) in Psychology and Linguistics, and a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Melbourne, in Australia. She also completed her Ph.D. in Social Psychology at the University of Melbourne, in 2016. Her main research interests are moral psychology, intergroup conflict, and philosophical “just war theory,” which is why her thesis was on how people make moral judgments about killing in war.

However, moral psychology is a broad church, and for the past two years (2016 – 2018) she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UPenn working with Geoff Goodwin on a project involving people who are exceptionally commitment to various environmental causes. Many of these “environmental exemplars” express a moral obligation to care for the natural environment and for future generations of humans. Through in depth interviews we attempted to unpack this sense of obligation, as well as explore how it relates to the environmentalists’ sense of connection to nature and to other people, and to their optimism (or pessimism) about the future of the planet.

As part of the Psychology of Peace and Violence Program at UMass, Hanne will continue to research both environmental and moral psychology, focusing first on how people conceptualize war and peace – Are the two concepts antonyms? Do they include moral content, good or bad? Are wars inevitably associated with environmental destruction as well as with the destruction of human life? – and the consequences these conceptualizations have for outcomes such as willingness to support specific peace building initiatives, engagement with veteran community groups, and the likelihood of joining the military.

Dr. Hanne M. Watkins CV
Dr. Hanne M. Watkins webpage