Leadership and Core Team
Ewa Szumowska
Principal Investigator
Behaviour in Crisis Lab UJ
Researcher at the Institute of Psychology of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and fellow researcher at the University of Maryland.
Her research interests focus on motivation and motivated cognition. She also explores multitasking, goal achievement, and extremism. Recently, her interests have also included responses to extreme and crisis situations.
Małgorzata Kossowska
Director
Behaviour in Crisis Lab UJ
Head of the Department of Social Psychology and the Center for Research on Social Cognition at the Institute of Psychology of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.
Her research interests include the cognitive and motivational foundations of complex social phenomena, knowledge resistance, cognitive rigidity, and their relationship to social problem-solving and sociopolitical decision-making.
Manos Tsakiris
Director
Centre for the Politics of Feelings RHUL
Director of the Centre for the Politics of Feelings at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. His most recent research examines how our emotions shape and are shaped by politics. He is also interested in the development of political cognition in early adolescence, and he is the Science Lead of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network IP-PAD (‘Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Adolescence and Democracy’)
Giovanni Telesca
Postdoctoral Researcher
Behaviour in Crisis Lab UJ
He got his PhD at the University of Siena in March 2025 and worked as a Postdoc at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia until November 2025. His research focuses on the role of positive moral emotions and moral role models in eliciting prosocial behavior. As a researcher at the BiC Lab, he focuses on political participation, political radicalization and polarization, activism, volunteering, and civic engagement.
Jesse Mehravar
Postdoctoral Researcher
Centre for the Politics of Feelings RHUL
He got his PhD in Political Science at the University of Western Ontario in October 2025. He is currently researching the psychological correlates of pro- and anti-democratic populist orientations. Jesse’s dissertational and collaborative research explores the political implications of emotions and national identity, particularly in assessing limits and prospects of expanded ingroup boundaries.
Advisory Board
Arie Kruglanski
University of Maryland , College Park
He is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, where he directs the Motivated Cognition Laboratory at the Department of Psychology. Among the projects the lab is currently pursuing are violent extremism, political activism, the quest for significance, coping with uncertainty, and closed-mindedness.
Michele Gelfand
Stanford University
She is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Professor of Psychology and Faculty Affiliate of the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Relations by Courtesy at Stanford University. She is the director of the Culture Lab and studies the strength of cultural norms, negotiation, conflict, trust, revenge, forgiveness, and diversity.
Ying-Yi Hong
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
She is currently the Choh-Ming Li Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include culture and cognition, identity and intergroup relations. She believes in interdisciplinary research, and seeks to integrate social psychology, behavioral economics, neuroscience, and genetics to study identity and intergroup dynamics.