Research in a Nutshell
From webinar reviews to student research projects, here you can find anything research related!
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November webinar: Radicalization & Extremism
Dear RP friends, The Research Office Webinar reviews have returned! The November webinar on the 27th was on radicalization and extremism, with our speaker Cátia Moreira de Carvalho. Cátia Moreira de Carvalho is a Marie Curie Fellow at Dublin City University, School of Law and Government. She is also an integrated researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She was recently selected as a member of the Thematic Panel on Foreign Fighters of the EU Knowledge Hub on Prevention of Radicalisation (European Commission), and is a member of the European Researcher Community on Radicalisation. The webinar first introduces the concept of terrorism with emphasis…
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Beyond Grades and Deadlines: The Power of Christmas Cards in Academia
If there are any clear signs of what this time of year stands for, it’s the cold gusts of wind blowing through tree branches with no leaves, the frost painted across windows during early mornings, and… the distant sound of Mariah Carey’s whistled notes signalling that “it’s tiiiiiiiiiime”. For many, listening to Mariah Carey’s song on repeat is an established Christmas tradition, but I’d like to remind you of another important one: exchanging Christmas cards. In our current era of booming digital technology — where GiFs, group chats, and instant messaging prevail — exchanging Christmas cards has shifted toward digital alternatives. However, this tradition remains a symbol of acknowledgement, appreciation,…
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Siblings
Dear RP friends, We continue our blog articles on the Psychology of Close Relationships, the official Research Programme Theme for 2025/2026. In this review, we delve deeper into sibling relationships. In our announcement of the Research Program 2025/2026 (Hugs and Hypotheses: Psychology of Close Relationships), we noted that birth order can influence relationships, making it an important issue to discuss with clients on the couch and to examine scientifically. Alfred Adler was one of the first theorists to connect birth order with client understanding. Adler highlighted psychological birth order, focusing on children’s perceptions of their family roles over their ordinal positions. He stated, “It is not the child’s number in…
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December webinar: The Complex Ring of Jingle Bells
Dear RP friends, Research Office webinar season continues! The December webinar on the 19th was on The Complex Ring of Jingle Bells, with our speaker, Maximilian Primbs. Maximilian Primbs is a fourth-year PhD candidate at the Behavioural Science Institute of Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He is also the Assistant Director for Translation and Cultural Diversity at the Psychological Science Accelerator. His research interests include implicit bias, prejudice reduction, stereotypes and visual perception, statistics and meta-science, and open science. He is interested in how social and cultural environments shape attitudes and beliefs. Primbs discussed findings from his recent research endeavour in the study called The Complex Ring of Jingle…
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November webinar: Men and psychotherapy
Dear RP friends, Research Office webinar season continues! The November webinar, which took place on 26th November, explored the theme of Men and psychotherapy with our wonderful speaker Fredric E. Rabinowitz, Ph.D. Dr. Rabinowitz has been actively involved in the academic study and clinical practice of masculinity and psychotherapy with men for the past 40 years, working with other psychologists from the American Psychological Association (APA) to bridge the gap between psychological theory and applied clinical practice of the same topic. Dr. Rabinowitz has been a professor of psychology at the University of Redlands in California since 1984, writing many articles, book chapters and five books about working within this…
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Theories of love
Dear RP friends, We continue our blog articles on the Psychology of Close Relationships as an official Research Programme Theme for 2025/2026. “Relationships with others are central to the human experience: we are born into them, live through them, and their impact continues even after we die, influencing the lives of those who remain.” (Berscheid, 1999, as cited in Finkel et al., 2017). In this review, we delve deeper into the main theories of relationship science, focusing on romantic relationships as a topic of interest. In our theme announcement of Research Programme 2025/2026 (Hugs and Hypotheses: Psychology of Close Relationships), we mentioned that the three most influential theoretical frameworks are…
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Research Programme 2025/2026 Theme Announcement: Hugs and Hypotheses: Psychology of Close Relationships
Dear Psychology Students and Academic Workers, We are pleased to inform you of the theme for the 2025/2026 Research Programme – Hugs and Hypotheses: Psychology of Close Relationships. Research Programme 2025/2026 Theme: Hugs and Hypotheses: Psychology of Close Relationships The research of close relationships is a broad and rich field in psychology. The development of a unified science focused on understanding human relationships only began in the 1980s. Today, relationship science is an interdisciplinary field that uses various empirical methods to explore how interpersonal relationships begin, develop, are maintained, and eventually dissolve. It examines the structure and progression of relationships, the dynamics of how they function, and how individual characteristics…
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October webinar: Open Science 101
Dear RP friends, Research Office webinar season has officially begun! We kicked off with a webinar on Open Science 101 that took place on 21st of October. Our speaker was Dr. Nicolás Alessandroni, a Postdoctoral Fellow working at the Concordia Infant Research Laboratory (Concordia University, Canada). His work explores the intersection of open science and infant research. He earned his PhD in Psychology from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), where he investigated the relationship between object use and the early development of conceptual thinking using an ecological-enactive approach to cognition. In 2023, he was honored with the prestigious Jean Piaget Society’s Doctoral Dissertation Award (USA). Dr. Alessandroni co-leads the…
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The perfect cocktail for the brain
instagram: @zbudgiez Does the expression “The brain is like a muscle; you have to train it” ring a bell? At some point, you might have heard this. Just like a rigorous lifting workout at the gym, the brain has a similar behavior to the body’s muscles, which is why it gets frequently compared. But guess what? neurons hardly grow after the age of 25. However, the synaptic connections between them do proliferate along and throughout a lifetime, which is what we commonly call synaptogenesis. This phenomenon is eased by neuronal plasticity, and findings trust that “brain gains” are based on the new synaptic connections. But why? Well, increased connections are…
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December webinar: Methodological and Practical Aspects of Experience Sampling Studies in Contemporary Psychological Research
Dear readers, We hope everyone is doing well in this busy academic time. We are honoured to extend our invitation to the upcoming webinar that will concentrate on data collection in your studies. As we all know, methodology is often the most challenging aspect of research projects and it is imperative to ensure proper sampling to achieve accurate results. The webinar will take place on 1st December at 17:30 CEST and will be delivered by Aliye Canan Taşlıoğlu Sayıner, a psychologist, psychotherapist, and researcher from Turkey. The presentation will follow the topic of “Methodological and Practical Aspects of Experience Sampling Studies in Contemporary Psychological Research”. We plan it to last…