Renata Bongiorno

Dr. Renata Bongiorno is a social psychologist and senior lecturer at Bath Spa University. Her research focuses on stereotypes, collective action and social change, particularly relating to gender.

Renata earned her PhD from the Australian National University in 2010. She subsequently worked as a researcher and lectured in Australia for 6 years, primarily based at The University of Queensland. In 2017 she moved to the United Kingdom to work as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Exeter for 5 years. Renata joined Bath Spa University in 2022.

Renata’s published research spans multiple areas, including issues of prejudice towards women and privileges afforded to men in leadership, how people are mobilised to act on climate change, how identity and emotion contribute to biases when responding (or failing to respond) to gender-based violence, and effects of neoliberal feminism on women's protest motivation.

Some of Renata’s ongoing projects include: examining men’s engagement with the gender-equality cause (supported by a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant) and advancing new theory and analysis to examine stereotype content, with implications for understanding leader-gender bias and gender and class biases in STEM fields.

Renata’s research has received broad media coverage, including by Psychology Today, BBC, Forbes, The Huffington Post, Medium and New Scientist. She has given invited presentations to community, industry and academic audiences in Australia, Europe and North America, and regularly acts as a reviewer for academic journals in the areas of social, political, and organisational psychology, and gender studies.