UCG students in Cyprus for a Social Psychology group meeting

In November UCG staff and former students found themselves in the buffer zone of Nicosia, Cyprus where a small group meeting on Deeply Divided Societies was held.

The three-day meeting (4-6th November) was funded by the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP) and it was organized by a group of Cypriot Social Psychologists (UCG’s Maria Ioannou being one of them).

Researchers from all over the world (including Belgium, Lebanon, Israel, Northern Ireland, Hungary, and even Hong Kong) presented their research related to the meeting’s topic

UCG contribution

Amongst them were Prof. Alette Smeulers (teaching War at UCG) who presented a theoretical paper on perpetrators of international crimes and UCG’s alumnus and current PhD student at University of Utrecht, Kaja Warnke, who presented an empirical paper on perceptions of territorial ownership by Israeli Jews and Palestinians.

Alumni

The three conference attendees (Maria, Alette, and Kaja) were very happy to discover that the conference venue was the place of work of another UCG alumnus, Tim Driessen (first picture). After graduating from UCG, Tim did his Master’s in Peace and Conflict studies at Uppsala University. He is currently working for the Peace Players Cyprus; a youth movement using basketball as a reconciliation tool to empower youth across the conflict divide in Cyprus.

You can see all of them basking in November's sun outside the Home for Cooperation, the meeting's venue.