In this episode, we spoke with Tabea Hässler who is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.
PAST (
00:01:32): Tabea shares how as a high school student and activist, she launched a campaign against racism and homophobia after noticing that these topics were ignored at school. She explains how decorating the school overnight and bringing in speakers and press to speak against racism and homophobia were her first steps to becoming an activistic scholar.
PRESENT (
00:11:33): Tabea discusses an article by Saguy and colleagues (2009) on positive intergroup contact and its relations to supporting social change toward equality. She points out that positive contact may reduce prejudice between groups, but at the same time, it may weaken the willingness of disadvantaged groups to fight for social equity.
FUTURE (
00:35:23): Tabea pointed out her future ambitions to diversify research samples which to this day are mainly from the U.S. and Western Europe. She also criticizes unhealthy working conditions in research, during and after the Ph.D., including unpaid overtime and job insecurity. Later, she shares how - very early in her career - she managed to set up a large-scale, international collaboration study involving participants from 69 countries.
FULL REFERENCES OF THIS EPISODE AND USEFUL LINKS:
Hässler, T., Ullrich, J., Bernardino, M., Shnabel, N., Laar, C. V., Valdenegro, D., ... & Ugarte, L. M. (2020). A large-scale test of the link between intergroup contact and support for social change.
Nature Human Behaviour, 4(4), 380-386.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0815-z
Pratto, F., Saguy, T., Stewart, A. L., Morselli, D., Foels, R., Aiello, A., ... & Sweetman, J. (2014). Attitudes toward Arab ascendance: Israeli and global perspectives.
Psychological science, 25(1), 85-94.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613497021
*Saguy, T., Tausch, N., Dovidio, J. F., & Pratto, F. (2009). The irony of harmony: Intergroup contact can produce false expectations for equality. Psychological science, 20(1), 114-121.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19152543/
Swiss LGBTQI+ panel: Academic Study, representing LGBTIQ+ people from all over Switzerland. Curated by Dr. Léïla Eisner and Dr. Tabea Hässler
https://swiss-lgbtiq-panel.ch
Thöni, C., Eisner, L., & Hässler, T. (2022). Not straight enough, nor queer enough: Identity denial, stigmatization, and negative affect among bisexual and pansexual people.
Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity.
https://doi.org/10.1037/sgd0000606
FURTHER INSPIRING AUTHORS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Roberto Gonzales, Nurit Shnabel, Kristina Olson
What is ReSearching Diversity?
Join a group of six women in social sciences in their aim to increase visibility of inspiring social scientists and of cutting-edge research on ethnic, cultural, and migration-related diversity. Each episode, two hosts invite one outstanding scientist to discuss their PAST (personal path into academia), the PRESENT (research article or book chapter that has recently inspired them), and the FUTURE (recent developments and paradigm shifts in academia and social sciences).
For more information on the episode, guest, and included references, please visit https://www.researchingdiversity.com.
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We want to thank Minor Revisions for the music, Lotte Gottschewski-Kooijman for the logo design, Max Kersten for post production, and zeythehuman for their artwork. Stay tuned and talk soon!