Fouad Bou Zeineddine

At a time when Western exceptionalism is proving illusory, there is much to learn from peoples who have fought for just peace & liberation for centuries. Our call for critical/Majority World research on resistance in psych of peace & conflict:
www.apa.org/pubs/journals/pac/resistance-peace-conflict

Acting as if we were free: Prefigurative politics in repressive contexts YouTube video by Resistance Psychology Network

Did you miss the session on "Prefigurative Politics in Repressive Contexts" with activists and researchers from Lebanon, Serbia and Turkey?

Here's the recorded session, now available in the Resistance Psychology Network's Youtube channel:
youtu.be/Q0S65MPOu8E

📢 Call for Papers
Special Issue: Rethinking Resistance in Peace & Conflict

#peace #psychology #APA

We invite work that challenges dominant models of #peace ✊🏽

See www.apa.org/pubs/journals/pac/resistance-peace-conflict for more information

@apajounals.bsky.social
@lauraktaylorPHD.bsky.social

A CT ING A S I F WE WERE FREE: PREF I G U R A T IVE P O L I T ICS IN REPRESSIVE C ONTEXTS Ps y c h o l ogy o f Re s i s t a n c e Vir t u a l M e e t i ng Se ri e s This roundtable will bring together activists from Lebanon and Serbia who have engaged in some form of prefigurative politics, and researchers who have studied prefigurative movements in these two contexts and Turkey. All three contexts were or are marked with extensive use of police violence and other forms of severe repression. Researchers will present key insights from their studies on prefigurative movements. The roundtable will invite activists to reflect on what kinds of research, knowledge, or theoretical tools could best support their struggles, and will also give them the opportunity to respond directly to academic interpretations of their work. TIJANA KARIĆ [UNIVERSITY OF MARBURG] CHADEN NOUEIHED HANI [ACTION RESEARCH ASSOCIATES, LEBANON] THIA SAGHERIAN-DICKEY [UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE] YASEMIN GÜLSÜM ACAR [UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS] JELENA BOŽIĆ [SVIĆE, SERBIA] ORHAN KAYA [UNIVERSITY OF MARBURG] MONDAY, FEB 9, 2026 9:00 San Francisco 11.00 Managua 12:00 New York 17.00 London 18:00 Belgrade 19.00 Beirut 20.00 Istanbul REGISTER: TINYURL.COM/PREFIGURATIVE

The next session of Psychology of Resistance Virtual Meetings is next Monday, February 9:

We do a Roundtable Session on Prefigurative Politics in Repressive Contexts with activists from Lebanon and Serbia and researchers studying prefigurative movements.

To register: tinyurly.com/prefigurative

TITLE: Privileged representations of peace: Perpetuating systemic violence AUTHORS: Ekin Birdir, Ludwin Molina, canan coşkan ABSTRACT: Privileged representations of peace: Perpetuating systemic violenceEkin Birdir, Ludwin Molina, canan coşkanAbstractSocial psychological research typically focuses on promoting peace between groups in conflict by fostering intergroup harmony through prejudice reduction or advancing social justice through collective action. Unfortunately, these investigations rarely consider the mainstream discursive structures and epistemic engagement that normalize collective ethnic/racial violence. We addressed this gap with two mixed-method (i.e., qualitative and quantitative) studies in two contexts (Turkey and the United States), utilizing decolonial frameworks informed by liberation psychology, critical race theory and privileged ethnic/racial (Turkishness and White racial) contracts. Comparative analysis of meta-representations of peace among Turks (Study 1; N = 116) and White Americans (Study 2; N = 151) exposed the overlapping (i.e., negative peace and reliance on the nation-state order) and divergent (i.e., assimilative inclusion and neoliberal individuality) elements of privileged epistemic engagement with peace that align with Turkishness and White racial contracts, perpetuating collective violence. Furthermore, both Turks' and White Americans' ethnic/racial identity endorsement predicted higher perceptions of the state/military contribution to peace, suggesting the role of racial privilege in maintaining systemic violence. To our knowledge, this work is the first social psychological investigation of the Turkishness contract and the comparative analysis of privileged meta-representations of peace.

📢Fresh article out:

Comparing the White racial contract (Mills) in the U.S. and the Turkishness contract (Ünlü) in Turkey through mixed-methods, Ekin, Ludwin and I exposed how "peace" is used to maintain the status quo rather than achieve justice.

bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

UPDATE: Eleven Palestinian students wounded as Israeli forces storm Birzeit University campus

Update: casualties rising as students shot with live ammo in broad daylight on campus: english.wafa.ps/Pages/Detail...

UPDATE: Three Palestinian students wounded as Israeli forces storm Birzeit University campus

Haven’t seen this reported in the UK news at all. My colleagues there report that faculty members were also stopped and prevented from entering campus.

english.wafa.ps/Pages/Detail...

Happening today!

Still time to register: tinyurl.com/disruptive-p...

I’ve voted ‘yes’ & ‘yes’ in the @ucu.org.uk ballot. Enough is enough. #WeAreTheUniversity

At a time when Western exceptionalism is proving illusory, there is much to learn from peoples who have fought for just peace & liberation for centuries. Our call for critical/Majority World research on resistance in psych of peace & conflict:
www.apa.org/pubs/journals/pac/resistance-peace-conflict

And so we choose to do battle against the forces of darkness, #ghting back against a malevolent movement that represents all that is bad in the world— fascism, authoritarianism, racism, misogyny, and bigotry— a movement that uses antiscienti#c disinformation as its preferred weapon. We do this not because our success is guaranteed. Given the forces mobilized against us, we are clearly the underdog. And no white wizard will come to our rescue. But we have truth and justice on our side. And the stakes simply couldn’t be greater. We #ght for a livable planet, for us, our children, and future generations. Because it’s worth #ghting for.8

The concluding paragraph of #ScienceUnderSiege
(www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/micha...)

Join the Methods in Social Change and Inertia series on Oct 20 at 2pm UK time for a workshop on the Social Change Algorithm by Roxane de la Sablonniere, Diana Cardenas, and Jean-Marc Lina! Register: events.teams.microsoft.com/event/25bb20...

#psychology #socialsciences #socialpsych #socialchange

Psychological Research on Resistance and Repression: A Research Method Bazaar Interactive Workshop (90 mins) Led by Aya Adra, Fouad Bou Zeineddine, canan coşkan, Ali Teymoori, and Johanna Ray Vollhardt) Monday, Oct 13, 2025 Many questions in social psychological research on resistance and repression have not been systematically addressed– in part because of the methodological limitations and rigidities in the field, in addition to practical and ethical considerations. For example, how does one examine covert resistance under conditions of surveillance and risk, how does one access forms of everyday resistance that may not be articulated as such, how does one conduct research on resistance that is under repression without creating further risk or harm to the participant and/or to the research team, how does one access information about resistance under extremely violent and most repressive conditions, such as genocide? This session is an interactive methods workshop, a bazaar of ideas and research experience, where participants will share and swap knowledge about underutilized methods that have been or could be used to examine different forms of resistance (above all those forms of resistance that are understudied) in various contexts of violence and repression. The organizers will bring examples of a relevant, underutilized research method and share it with participants in a brief (5 min) blitz presentation. We also invite participants (optional, not required for participation) to bring along their methods, ideas, suggestions, questions and dilemmas, and experiences to share (5 mins max), with or without a slide or two. We will also discuss more general, overarching questions related to methodological limitations in research on resistance and repression and ways to address these. 7.00 am NYC, 8.00 Santiago (Chile), 12 (noon) London, 13.00 Barcelona, 14.00 Ramallah & Istanbul, 16.30 New Delhi, 19.00 Manila, 21.00 Brisbane. Registration link in the original post.

The 1st session of this year's Psychology of Resistance Virtual Meetings is next Monday, October 13:
We start with an interactive workshop to diversify our methodological toolbox to better investigate forms of resistance and repression in different contexts.
To register: tinyurl.com/resistancere...

This is an interactive "methods bazaar". Thus, you can also bring along your methods, ideas, suggestions, questions and dilemmas, and experiences to share (5 mins max), with or without a slide or two (optional, not required for participation).

Remember to register: tinyurl.com/resistancere...

The image contains the schedule of the planned events for the Psychology of Resistance Network. The schedule can be found online: https://resistancepsych.blogspot.com/p/schedule.html

The 3rd year of the Psychology of Resistance (in violent, repressive contexts) Virtual Meeting Series is starting this month - here is the schedule for the academic year 2025/26. More information, recordings, and form for mailing list to receive registration links here:
resistancepsych.blogspot.com

Interested in state-of-the-art methodologies to study social change? My brilliant colleague @drfbzen.bsky.social is hosting Dr. Agnieszka Rychwalska next week, funded by British Academy! 👉 resistancepsych.blogspot.com/p/methods-in... Come and learn all things functional connectivity analysis! 🧐

Doughnut academia. Adapting the “doughnut” model of economics to the academic world enables us to visualize the inner social foundations that universities should provide, and the outer human and planetary boundaries that universities need to avoid overshooting. Note that the ordering of elements within the inner and outer rings is random; there is no direct pairing between foundations and ceilings. Adapted from Raworth, 2017 under a CC-BY-SA license.

Seven ways to think like a 21st century scientist. 1. Change the goal: from a business that produces papers and graduated students, towards a university that works towards the inside space of the academic doughnut. 2. Get savvy with systems: from feeling like a cog in the university machine, towards being gardeners of our academic system. 3. See the big picture: from academics who look out over the world from their ivory tower, towards scholarship which accepts its own embeddedness in (and dependence on) society and the planet. 4. Create to regenerate: from a rat race where we tread water, towards “slow scholarship” that values community building, deep thinking and rest crucial for intellectual work. 5. Nurture human nature: from the lone genius, towards team science. 6. Design to distribute: from a funding system where the rich get richer, towards a fair distribution of opportunities and resources. 7. Be agnostic about growth: from a focus on increasing numbers of papers, citations and students, towards rebuilding trust in our own academic communities and with society.

Feeling like academia is in pretty bad shape? You're not alone.

@clarekelly.bsky.social and I previously wrote about the need to collectively rethink and reshape scientific practice: the academic doughnut. Read more at elifesciences.org/articles/84991

But, have these ideas changed anything? 👇

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Free BA-funded workshop by Dr Agnieszka Rychwalska on using functional connectivity analysis to analyse complex social systems on Sep 23 & 24! For details & registration: resistancepsych.blogspot.com/p/methods-in...
#psychology #socialsciences #socialpsych #socialchange

Great piece by Maja Kutlaca, Helena Radke & Melis Uluğ on moving psychology beyond selective allyship toward consistent global action. Well worth a read. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Last chance to register! Free workshops on computational & network approaches to research on social change! Sep 1-2: Prof. Simon Angus. Sep 4-5: Dr. Joshua Uyheng. More details here: resistancepsych.blogspot.com/p/methods-in...
#psychology #socialsciences #socialpsych #socialchange #researchmethods

This seems a clear manifestation of what Ismael Puga calls ideological inversion & the social psychological concept of pluralistic ignorance more broadly. agreed, politicians and the media clearly driving it - bc they can’t & won’t properly address the economy, environment, intl relations.

In September, we have 3 brilliant scholars providing free methods workshops on computational and network approaches to research on social change. Registration is now open for in-person and online attendance. More details here: resistancepsych.blogspot.com/p/methods-in...

We are here today precisely because the humanities and social sciences have largely been marginalised as they became more inclusive. The solution can not be to double down. I wish people could look at what is happening and understand - we all stand for knowledge and humanity or we all fall.

Resistance Psychology Virtual Session Proposals After the successful conclusion of the third round of our Psychology of Resistance in Repressive and Violent Contexts meeting series, we are excited to launch the submission form for sessions in 2025-...

Call for presentations and sessions in the next round of the Psychology of Resistance Virtual Meeting Series, September '25 - June '26! Details and formats as well as proposal submission form here: forms.gle/jcs2XEx9igdS... and more information about the series in the thread!

In September, we have 3 brilliant scholars providing free methods workshops on computational and network approaches to research on social change. Registration is now open for in-person and online attendance. More details here: resistancepsych.blogspot.com/p/methods-in...

Archive Recordings, publications, and other archival material will be published here. MSCI 25 Session 3 - June 3, 2025: Ideological Inversion Measur...

The recording for this session is now available here: resistancepsych.blogspot.com/p/archive.html

Third workshop of the Methods in Social Change and Inertia series is coming up on Tuesday June 3! Ismael Puga and Cristobal Moya will discuss methods to examine ideological inversion, a key factor in inertia. For more, see: resistancepsych.blogspot.com/p/methods-in-societal-change-and-inertia.html

Third workshop of the Methods in Social Change and Inertia series is coming up on Tuesday June 3! Ismael Puga and Cristobal Moya will discuss methods to examine ideological inversion, a key factor in inertia. For more, see: resistancepsych.blogspot.com/p/methods-in-societal-change-and-inertia.html

Microsoft Virtual Events Powered by Teams Microsoft Virtual Events Powered by Teams

Second workshop of the Methods in Social Change and Inertia series is Thursday, May 29! Emma Thomas (Flinders) will be showing us new approaches to using person-centred analyses in collective action research. Register here: tinyurl.com/MSCI25No2