In a career spanning many social contexts and continents, Dr. Katya Migacheva has emerged as a uniquely impactful voice in the world of social psychology, with a passion for bridging research and real-world action. A social scientist at the RAND Corporation and founder of the new nonprofit BRAIN (Bridging Research and Action Integrative Network), Migacheva’s work explores the deep social currents that shape identity, intergroup conflict, and societal transitions.
Growing up in post-Soviet Russia, Migacheva's early life was defined by rapid geopolitical change and personal revelations. “The clashes of identities, plus my own coming of age in that context, really got me interested in how groups of people grow to like each other or hate each other. This was the root of my interest in social psychology," she recalls. Learning about the experiences of marginalization of minority groups within Russia, she sought to understand the roots of prejudice and to help other teenagers like herself find empowerment and belonging amidst the societal upheaval. Witnessing multiple intergroup conflicts of the time, both within Russia and far beyond, and observing the similarities and differences within various contexts prompted her to search for a greater understanding of these social dynamics. This early insight eventually led her to the field of social psychology after immigrating to the United States.
Migacheva's academic path took off at Indiana University–Purdue University, where she studied psychology and was a member of the Intergroup Relations Lab directed by Dr. Leslie Ashburn-Nardo. In the lab she assisted in research design and data collection for studies on racial prejudice and bias. For her PhD she attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, working with renowned intergroup contact scholar Linda Tropp. Being admitted to the unique Psychology of Peace and Violence Program to study the questions that reflected so much of her own experiences felt like a dream come true. Her dissertation was rooted in her early lived experiences and questions and led her to conduct field research in Ukraine, where she explored the shifting dynamics between Russians and Ukrainians, highlighting how contemporary feelings of threat were rooted in re-evaluations of historical injustices.
“While regimes may fall or agreements get signed overnight, transitions take a long time,” she emphasizes. “The past affects the present—and shapes the future.” Her research in Ukraine in 2011 proved remarkably forward-looking, capturing societal undercurrents that would later erupt on the world stage. “What I wanted to study is ‘what drives the relationship between these two groups after the transition happened; is it the perceptions of today or is it also the perceptions of the past?’”
As a PhD student, Migacheva learned how to perform rigorous research and produce knowledge that is defensible from a scientific point of view. However, she hoped that her work would someday be applied to real-world scenarios. At times she found academic research too isolated from the people it aimed to help. “I really felt the need to be connected with practitioners and to start to understand how to translate this work.” With support of Linda Tropp and her other UMass mentor, Leah Wing, Migacheva began to regularly interact with local and international practitioners in the field of intergroup relations, through collaborative research, program development, and research-practitioner convenings.
She started to find her calling, hoping to bridge gaps between researchers sequestered in their labs and public policymakers responding to pressing issues on the ground. This desire for connection led her to Washington, DC, where she served as a senior Democratic staffer on the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission as part of a policy fellowship provided by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. There, she launched a seminar series connecting social scientists with lawmakers. “It wasn’t always possible to bring a social scientist to a specific policy conversation. However, I realized even if scientists cannot have that one-on-one connection, we can help decision makers to understand social psychology and how individual processes connect with societal processes,” Migacheva notes.
In her present position as a social scientist at RAND, Migacheva thrives in a role that blends research with policy application. Her work has focused on subjects such as criminal justice, violent extremism, and societal transitions.
One such transition she studied was post-revolution Tunisia. She looked at how the disillusionment with the transition period following the revolution affected Tunisians’ attitudes toward democracy going forward. Other projects include multiple evaluations of reentry programs for formerly incarcerated individuals in the US and the development of a comprehensive framework to inform states’ approaches to the prevention of domestic terrorism and violent extremism.
“Working at RAND has given me this ability to understand or to at least seek answers to what people who are marginalized, who are going through something very unique, are experiencing. I’ve been able to apply this to many different areas.”
She has also learned to value her experience as a non-U.S. native: “I’ve come to understand that when you want to be an analyst that can surface things that others may not be able to see, a vantage point of an outsider is beneficial. As an outsider, you work so hard to adapt to and learn about different systems and structures. You also must understand how people who are not in the majority adapt to them as well. I think this core understanding, along with the understanding of how group members experienced by race and class, was so useful in whatever I studied.”
Migacheva's newest venture, BRAIN, aims to simplify and scale the collaboration between researchers and practitioners. “At present, these collaborations are rare and can be prohibitively expensive,” she says. BRAIN will provide the infrastructure to make evidence-based practice the norm—not the exception.
The organization is creating extensive and dynamic databases of researchers, experts, and change-makers of many experience levels. When specific expertise is needed for a project, BRAIN will find the right individual or build a whole team to fulfill the project's scope and stay within a budget. Likewise, researchers can connect with like-minded practitioners and promote positive change.
Whether helping policymakers understand intergroup dynamics or mentoring the next generation of researchers, Katya Migacheva remains committed to one goal: ensuring that social science not only explains the world but also helps to improve it.
“I would say that the value of a UMass education is in how it makes you a strong critical thinker, a strong observer, and gives you the ability to deconstruct the world, hopefully with the mind and passion to build it back together better than it was.”