About us

Changing Societies Strategic Focus Area brings together research across all research groups in the School of Psychology designed to examine how people’s personal, relational, and collective functioning is shaped by—and contributes to shaping—important aspects of the sociocultural and historical contexts they inhabit.

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What we do

Broadly, Changing Societies Strategic Focus Area aims to coordinate, support, and publicise research in the School that 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 (e.g., handling multilevel data, developing scales that have cross-cultural validity, working with longitudinal panel data)
  • facilitating access to special populations through our existing links (e.g., 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 and co-create research with community partnerssupporting cross-fertilisation between members of School’s research groups to build new synergies to continue to understanding and solving societal challenges

Beyond activities within the School, Changing Societies Strategic Focus Area also provides a platform from which we develop new interdisciplinary links with members of other Schools at Sussex and beyond and apply for funding to support these links.