Societies Research Area

Discover more about our members on their profile pages.

• Dr Magdalena Zawisza (Lead)
• Dr Ilona Boniwell
• Dr Suzanna Forwood
• Dr Nicola Gibson
• Dr Annelie Harvey
• Dr Helen Keyes

• Shyanne Roeloffs
• Sarah Gradidge
• Karolyn Webb

24 July 2020: A new 42-country study, co-authored and co-designed by Dr Magdalena Zawisza, has found that the more gender egalitarian the country, the less likely men are to support women's causes.

Towards Gender Harmony

Towards Gender Harmony is a three-year cross-cultural project investigating a potential key barrier to gender equality progress globally: masculinity threat. The ambition of the project is to collect data from at least 40 countries and updates our knowledge on contemporary cross-national understanding of femininity, masculinity, gender stereotypes, attitudes and related behaviours as they link to gender (in)equality.

The project is worth £136k awarded by the Polish National Science Centre, and Dr Magdalena Zawisza is a co-applicant together with Dr Natasza Kosakowska (principal investigator, University of Gdansk, Poland), Prof Joseph Vandello and Prof Jennifer Bosson (University of South Florida, USA) and a team of six researchers.

Improving workers' health and safety in the road maintenance industry

This interdisciplinary project applies expertise from cognitive psychology (Dr David Pearson, lead) and consumer psychology (Dr Magdalena Zawisza) together with built environment (Dr Fred Sherratt) research to understand and improve health and safety practices across different structures in a road maintenance company.

It is conducted in partnership with Ringway Jacobs, a large highway service provider, and it worth £194,375, including a 50% grant from Innovate UK.

Pet playfulness and wellbeing in COVID-19 context

Two of our members, Dr Nicola Gibson (lead) and Sarah Gradidge, are investigating links between viewing playfulness in pet animals and greater wellbeing and reduced anxiety regarding COVID-19. Links between pets' playfulness and wellbeing have not yet been explored, nor has this relationship been investigated in the context of a global pandemic.

Collaborating cross-disciplinarily with an animal behaviourist (Dr Claudia Wascher) and across institutions with a psychologist from the University of Edinburgh (Dr Steve Loughnan), the researchers foresee positive implications of this project for reducing loneliness and improving wellbeing both during and after COVID-19, especially among people who live only with pets.