Profile of Gavin SULLIVAN

I am a Professor of Social Psychology with interests in group-based and collective emotions, social identities, collective action, protests/social movements, disaster resilience, preparedness and impact, social policies and the political psychology of populism and grievance politics.

Vision Statement
I use theoretically-driven and interdisciplinary social psychological research methods and community intervention approaches that typically challenge disciplinary boundaries and mainstream research methods and frameworks to develop new perspectives on complex environmental hazards and intractable social problems. I explore top-down and bottom-up responses to social change such as political protests and disengagement as well as the co-creation of solutions in partnership with individuals, communities and organisations in countries such as the UK, Germany, Brazil, Indonesia, Chile, and Australia. Exploring patterns of individual, group-based and collective affect and emotion in discursive practices is a recurrent theme in my theoretical and empirical work.

Biography
After completing a PhD thesis on "Wittgenstein and Reflexivity" at the University of Canterbury of Christchurch (New Zealand), I moved to Australia and worked at the University of Western Sydney, the University of Sydney, and Monash University in Melbourne. My interests in theoretical psychology quickly developed to include using qualitative methods in research while I also gained practical experience conducting short-term and long-term psychotherapy in clinical, forensic and private-practice settings. After being awarded a prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship in 2006, I spent several years in Berlin researching individual, group-based and collective pride at the Free University (FU) Berlin. I also developed an interest in community-oriented and social accounts of post-disaster coping and recovery, which has resulted in long-term collaborations with colleagues in Indonesia since 2009. After a period as a guest professor with the Languages of Emotion research cluster at the FU, I moved to the UK in 2010 and spent 4 years working in several UK psychology departments before being promoted to Reader and leading the Identity and Resilience in Communities and Organisations research group at Coventry University. I joined the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University where I still have a part-time Professorship. I have been a Professor of Social Psychology at IPU Berlin since October 2020.

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