Departmental Seminar Series
A weekly seminar for the LSE community
The Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science hosts a term-time seminar series, where we invite researchers to present their latest findings.
The series is particularly beneficial for LSE students and early career researchers as it presents the opportunity to discuss and debate new findings in social psychology and behavioural science in a small, open setting.
How to join a seminar
The PBS Departmental Seminar Series is open to all LSE staff and students.
Seminars normally take place on Wednesdays at 12-1pm during term time. This year the series will take place in a hybrid format - both in-person and online - unless specified.
All details, including speaker information, title and abstract, location and Zoom link will be sent via email each week from the PBS Events team pbs.events@lse.ac.uk. Please refer to this email for any changes to schedule and confirmation on the format. If you are a member of LSE staff or a student from outside the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, please email pbs.events@lse.ac.ukto join the mailing list.
2025/26 speakers
Winter Term
- Wednesday 28 January 2026
Dr Jens Koed Madsen, LSE
Title: 'The importance of dependencies for polarisation and reasoning' - Wednesday 4 February 2026
Dr Joey Sherlock, KCL
Title: 'Behavioural Science and Democracy' - Wednesday 11 February 2026
Dr Yana Litovsky, LSE
Title: 'When Curiosity Helps — and When it Hurts' - Wednesday 4 March 2026
Dr Maximilian Maier, University of Warwick
Title: 'Learning from outcomes shapes reliance on moral rules versus cost–benefit reasoning' - Wednesday 11 March 2026
Dr Amy Errmann, Auckland University of Technology
Title: 'Status by Design: Mindfulness Moderates Consumer Response to Loud vs. Quiet Luxury Advertising' - Wednesday 18 March 2026
Dr Ariana Modirrousta-Galian, UCL
Title: 'AI for Test-Enhanced Learning' - Wednesday 25 March 2026
Dr Christian Krekel, LSE
Title: 'Volunteering, Mental Health, and Pro-Sociality: Evidence From England's National Health Service'
Autumn Term
- Wednesday 8 October 2025
Dr Sandra Obradović, LSE
Title: 'First-time voter experiences as societal rites of passage: a qualitative study and field intervention' - Wednesday 15 October 2025
Dr Pablo Navarrete-Hernández, University of Chile
Title: 'Urban Behavioural Science: How the Built Environment Influences Emotion' - Wednesday 22 October 2025
Dr Christa Sathish, University of Westminster
Title: 'Let’s form a positive academia collective transformation: Re-imagining our academic values and interactions' - Tuesday 28 October 2025, 2-3pm (note day and time)
Professor Michalis Drouvelis, University of Birmingham
Title: 'Emotions and human cooperation' - Wednesday 12 November 2025
Dr Mohsen Mosleh, University of Oxford
Title: 'Divergent patterns of engagement with partisan and low-quality news across seven social media platforms' - Wednesday 19 November 2025
Dr Amena Amer, UCL
Title: '“The walls speak for themselves”: Exploring belonging, identity and safety among Muslim women in London universities' - Wednesday 26 November 2025
Dr Jamie Cummings, University of Bern
Title: 'Methodological and inferential issues with using large language models in social science' - Wednesday 3 December 2025
Dr Mikey Biddlestone, University of Kent
Title: 'What are conspiracy theories and what should we do about them?'
Past speakers
Autumn Term
- Dr Ilka Gleibs, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE
Title: 'A social identity approach to crisis leadership' - Dr Edoardo Zulato, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE
Title: 'Re-shaping pasts and futures to make sense of suspended present: The case of vegetative state patients' - Dr Sakshi Ghai, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE
Title: 'Rethinking sample diversity in research design' - Dr Dana Harari, Israel Institute of Technology
Title: 'I didn’t ask for ChatGPT’s help: How AI anticipatory help increases threat and decreases AI utilization' - Dr Ashley Whillans, Harvard Business School
Title: 'The Buy-In Effect: When Increasing Initial Effort Motivates Behavioral Follow-Through' - Professor Fabio Tufano, University of Leicester
Title: 'How Social Relationships Affect Group Cooperation: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Real Groups' - Professor Dr Rolf van Dick, University of Frankfurt
Title: 'The new psychology of leadership: Evidence from the Global Identity Leadership Development (GILD) project and beyond' - Dr David Kaposi, The Open University
Title: 'Why did they obey? The presence and absence tension in Stanley Milgram’s “Obedience to authority” experiments' - Dr Joshua Becker, UCL
Title: 'Collective Intelligence is Negotiation: Group Decisions Amidst Disagreement'
Winter Term
- Dr Sanaz Talaifar, Imperial College London
Title: 'Political Identity in Digital Environments' - Dr Seamus Power, University of Copenhagen
Title: 'World-Making: Field social psychology and processes of social change' - Dr Cameron Brick, University of Amsterdam
Title: 'Climate actions from individual to collective' - Dr Anna Schulze Tilling, Bocconi University
Title: 'Tastes better than expected: Post-intervention effects of a vegetarian month in the student canteen' - Professor Dr Michele Bernasconi, University of Bern
Title: 'Tax evasion: models of behaviour, evidence, contrasting policies' - Dr Hugo Mercier, Institut Jean Nicod
Title: 'Why do people trust science?' - Professor Eleni Andreouli, The Open University
Title: "Social Psychology of citizenship" - Professor Juliane Degner, Hamburg University
Title: "The Instant Judgment: Exploring Spontaneous Trait Inferences and Their Implications"
Spring Term bonus seminar
- Professor Jana Gallus, UCLA Anderson School of Management
Title: 'Incentives and the Social Fabric of Organizations'
Autumn Term
- Dr Bouke Klein Teeselink, King's College London
Title: "Discounts Shift the Demand Curve: Evidence from Life-Saving Medications" - Dr George Melios, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE
Title: '"Sleeping with the enemy": The role of politics in online dating' - Dr Nicole Redvers, Western University
Title: "Indigenous Reflections on Land-based Research Methodologies" - Professor Paul O’Keefe, University of Exeter Business School
Title: "Why Telling People to Find Their Passion is Bad Advice" - Dr Alina Velias, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, PBS
Title: "Measuring beliefs, knowledge, and preferences" - Dr Adriana Monago, University of California Santa Cruz
Title: "Adolescents as Agents of Cultural Change and Continuity through their use of Social Media" - Dr Adam Harris, UCL
Title: "The prevalence & consequences of the severity effect in probability communication"
Winter Term
- Dr Lee de Wit, University of Cambridge
Title: "The political psychology of false polarization and real polarization around the cultural axis" - Dr Andreas Kotsadam, University of Oslo
Title: "The Social Transmission of Support for Authoritarian Rule: Evidence from Field and Survey Experiments" - Dr Charles Ogunbode, University of Nottingham
Title: "Climate justice perceptions around the world" - Dr Lauren Howe, University of Zurich
Title: "Does playing up one's humanity pay off for leaders?" - Dr Will M Gervais, Brunel University
Title: "Atheism as a Testing Ground For Theories of Religion" - Dr Catherine Thomas, University of Michigan
Title: "Culturally Wise Interventions and Their Influence on Meaning Making and Behavior Across Diverse Cultural Contexts" - Dr Anne Templeton, University of Edinburgh
Title: "Trying to understand how and why the public respond to safety guidance in emergencies – emphasis on the trying" - Dr Ekaterina Oparina, LSE
Title: "Talking Therapy: Impacts of a Nationwide Mental Health Service in England" - Professor Constantine Sedikides, University of Southampton
Title: "To Be Truthful or to Be Wonderful? The Rocky Road to Self-Knowledge"
Spring Term Bonus Seminars
- Professor Michelle Ryan, Australian National University
Title: "To Advance Gender Equality, Use the Evidence" - Dr Mai Albzour, Birzeit University
Title: "Portraying Palestine in the Social Psychology of Prejudice and Reconciliation - On Imposing Moral Guidelines on Oppressed Groups with Technical Concepts"
- Dr Georgios Melios, PBS, LSE
- Professor Andrew Oswald, Warwick University
- Professor Alex Gillespie, PBS, LSE
- Professor Elizabeth Stokoe, Loughborough University
- Professor Antonia Hamilton, UCL
- Dr Wijnand Van Tilburg, University of Essex
- Dr Divyush Khemka, PBS, LSE
- Dr Toby Pilditch, UCL
- Professor Ulrike Hahn, Birkbeck University
- Professor Colin Wayne Leach, Barnard College, Columbia University
- Professor Scott E Page, University of Michigan
- Dr Rim Saam, University of Sussex
- Dr Renate Ysseldyk, University of Carleton
- Vanessa Bohns, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior, Cornell University
- Patrick Humphreys, Emeritus Professor, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE
- Margaret Samahita, Assistant Professor at the School of Economics, University College Dublin and a Research Fellow at the Geary Institute for Public Policy
- Laura M. Giurge, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, LSE
- June Gruber, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado, Boulder
- Ullrich Ecker, University of Western Australia
- Moshe Hoffman, Research Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and Lecturer at Harvard's Department of Economics.
- Renata Bongiorno, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter
- Kristian Nielsen, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge
- Umberto Castiello, University of Padova, Principle Investigator, NEMO Laboratory
- Amanda Williams (IMD)
- Gregg Sparkman, Princeton University
- Sander van der Linden, University of Cambridge
- Shahzeen Attari, Indiana University Bloomington
- Gordon Flett, York University Canada
- Charless Efferson, University of Lausanne
- Patrick Hoggard, UCL
- Daniel Nettle, Newcastle University
- Aiyana Willard, Brunel
- Armin Falk, University of Bonn
- Rex Wright, University of North Texas
- Reto Odermatt, University of Basel
- Thomas Graeber, Harvard University