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Research associate, School of Psychology, University of Kent

My key interest is in exploring how leaders in groups and organizations are perceived, evaluated and chosen. I am a postdoctoral research associate, working the majority of my time with the Head of School. I am working on various projects exploring how different psychological biases affect our leadership decisions, contributing to the lack of diversity in leadership. For example, in one of my projects I explored whether challenging gender stereotypes might be a fruitful way of reducing biases towards people we stereotypically assume to be good leaders based on their representativeness. Another ongoing project explores how to attenuate the perceived incompatibility of gender stereotypes and leadership stereotypes that often lead to a backlash effect against women striving for leadership positions.

Next to my keen interest in exploring how we can increase the number of women and minorities in leadership I am also working as a Co-Investigator on a large inter-disciplinary project that was funded by the Templeton Religion Trust. The project explores the societal and cultural drivers that lead to the perceived necessity of a clash between the acceptance of evolution and religious beliefs. In this project I am leading the Social Psychological strand of the research. Similar to my leadership research investigating why women and leadership roles are perceived as incompatible, this research explores why other dual group memberships, such as "being a scientist" and "being religious" are commonly regarded as clashing, please follow this link for further information regarding this project : sciencereligionspectrum.org

Experience

  • –present
    Research associate, School of Psychology, University of Kent