Joint Coordinators
Prof. Kesi Mahendran
Scientific Coordinator
Professor of Social & Political Psychology specialised in the dialogue between citizens and their governments. Kesi Mahendran leads OppAttune and is the founding member of the Public Dialogue Psychology Collaboratory (PDPC), chair of the BPS Political Psychology Section and on the board of the IMISCOE Standing Committee on Reflexive Migration Studies.
Prof. Xenia Chrysouchouu
Administrative Coordinator
Director of the Social and Political Psychology lab at Panteion University in Athens. Xenia Chryssochoou works on identity, migration and multiculturalism, ideologies and political participation. She participated at the EC of the European Association of Social Psychology and chairs the Scientific Council of the Hellenic Foundation for Research & Innovation.
Prof. Umut Korkut
Scientific Coordinator
Professor of International Politics at Glasgow Caledonian University. Umut Korkut has an expertise in European politics, with specialisation in East European and Turkish politics. He is currently leading the Horizon 2020 funded project D.Rad: De-radicalisation in Europe and Beyond. His recent book reflects on crisis of cosmopolitanism in Europe
17 partners 16 countries 11 Universities 6 NGOs
Independent Research Advisory Committee
Assoc. Prof Berna Yazici
Berna Yazıcı is a socio-cultural anthropologist. She received her PhD from New York University. Currently, she teaches and supervises graduate students at Bogazici University’s Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History. Her research and scholarship focus on the politics of welfare and the family; gender; social inequality; anthropology of the state and policy, and urban transport and mobility.
Prof. Fathali Moghaddam
Fathali M. Moghaddam is Professor of Psychology at Georgetown University, and Editor, Cambridge University Press, Progressive Psychology Books Series. His recent books include ‘Mutual Radicalization: The Psychology of How Groups and Nations Drive Each Other to Extremes’ (2018), ‘How Psychologists Failed’ (2022) and ‘The Psychology of Revolution’ (March, 2024). Website: fathalimoghaddam.com
Prof. Simon Usherwood
Simon works on euroscepticism, most recently in the context of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. He has also done much work in bringing social science research to non-academic audiences, including through the ESRC’s UK in a Changing Europe initiative and as Chair of the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES).
Prof. Anne Kaun
Anne Kaun is Professor at the Department of Media and Communication Studies, Södertörn University, Sweden, and a Wallenberg Academy Fellow studying the democratic implications of automated decisions making, artificial intelligence and digitalization in the welfare sector.
Dr. Maria Xenitidou
Maria Xenitidou is assistant professor of Social Psychology at the University of Western Macedonia, Greece. Her background is on citizenship, identity and discourse from a critical social psychological approach. She has worked as a researcher in several research projects in Greece and the United Kingdom. Her research interests include identity, power, migration, citizenship and intergroup relations. She has presented and published extensively on these topics
Dr. Bruce White
Dr. Bruce White is the founding director of the Organization for Identity and Cultural Development (OICD). Bruce develops programs to redress identity-based divisions across: social and conflict transformation, social work, education, policing and public health. This includes the development of technologies, research, training and practice methods, and impact evaluation toolsets.
Ethics Board
An independent Ethics board sits within the Independent Research Advisory Committee, and the overall ethics of the project is led by Prof. Xenia Chryssochoou. The ethics board consists of Prof. Kesi Mahendran, and specialist advisors within the independent research advisory committee. A fundamental aim of the board is to ensure the protection of the participants’ rights, interests, values, dignity and health and safety at all times during the research process.
That anyone involved in the research will be fully informed and not coerced in any way to participate and will be given the right to retract their data within a defined period. The following key principles guide our research: informed consent, confidentiality and careful data management, and the protection of health and safety and dignity of participants and researchers
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Board
The OppAttune Project Consortium pledges its commitment to the European Commission’s Diversity and Inclusion Charter of 2017, in that it sets up an EDI Board as a pillar of the three-year long project. The EDI Board will prepare a public document accessible on the project website on our EDI policy based on the EC Charter and other relevant EC initiatives.
The EDI Board will be headed by Dr Irini Kadianaki and Dr Hasret Dikici Bilgin. They will be joined by Prof. Kesi Mahendran, Dr Harald Weilnböck, and Prof. Umut Korkut to deliver yearly evaluation reports.
Please read our equality, diversity, and inclusion report here:
Link to the document – ready in late September.
