About us
Find out more about who we are and what we do.
Who we are
The Centre for Research on Cultural and Social Diversity applies expertise in the fields of cultural and cross-cultural psychology to educational and organisational settings.
We are the largest expert group of researchers in the UK who work in these subfields of psychology.
We host large-scale comparative and applied research projects, supervise international research students from different world regions, and work collaboratively with behavioural economists, political scientists, organizational behaviour experts, linguists, and sociologists across different schools at Sussex and other institutions around the world.
We host unique expertise in designing comparative research across different groups, handling comparative data, and working with big survey data from sources such as the World Values Survey and the European Social Survey.
Our research has attracted external support from funding organisations such as the European Research Council, the British Academy, Templeton Foundation, the ESRC as well as from various learned societies and scientific organisations (e.g., European Association of Social Psychology, British Psychological Society) and charities and trusts.
Research areas
Our research is divided into four main areas:
- inequalities
- cultural and cross-cultural research
- social hierarchies
- social identities.
We explore how cultural, social and economic contexts influence the ways people think, feel and relate to each other.
Our work addresses diverse questions, such as:
- how cultural views of honour shape behaviour
- how economic inequality impacts social interactions
- how group identities affect educational outcomes.
We aim to understand and address social challenges, including inequality and polarisation.
Our research has real-world implications. Insights from our studies are used to improve team performance in organisations and are helping to create educational environments that are inclusive and conducive to well-being.
We’re committed to promoting a more global perspective within psychological science, highlighting how human behaviour is shaped by both universal and culturally specific factors.
Aims
Our aim is to coordinate, support and publicise research in the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex and beyond, which contributes to making psychological knowledge more societally relevant and culturally representative. We do this by:
- facilitating the formation of new collaborations with researchers in different parts of the world
- providing training in conducting valid, reliable and effective comparative psychological research
- sharing methodological and analytical expertise in designing, conducting, or accessing studies that have a societal or cultural focus (such as handling multilevel data, developing scales that have cross-cultural validity, working with longitudinal panel data)
- facilitating access to special populations through our existing links (including schools in neighbourhoods of different socio-economic status, ethnic minority groups, populations in different world regions)
- highlighting the sensitivities required when conducting research with different groups and promoting the use of inclusive, representative, and decolonizing approaches to research
- providing input into grants that have an international, comparative, or societal focus
- building connections between researchers and non-academic bodies to promote societal impact of our research.
We also provide a platform to maintain existing and develop new interdisciplinary links with members of other Schools at Sussex and beyond, and apply for funding to support these links.
Contact
Director
Prof Ayse K. Uskul
Deputy director
Dr Matthias Gobel