News – Sandra Obradovic

New PhD student alert

October 2024

In October 2024, Jennie Kirk began her part-time PhD at the OU. Jennie, who continues to work at the OU part-time, is supervised by myself, Jean McAvoy and Jovan Byford. Jennie's PhD will explore how Northumbrian women make sense of the impact of the 1984-5 miner’s strike on their identity and wider community.

New PhD student alert

February 2024

In February 2024, Tetiana Shyriaeva began her PhD at the OU, supervised by myself and Prof. Kesi Mahendran. Tania’s PhD explores the role of linguistic and geographical borders as sites where the everyday become extreme, due to ongoing conflict. Her PhD focuses on the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Promoted to Senior Lecturer

October 2023

In October 2023 I was officially promoted to Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the OU. Working on my case I had a lot of support from colleagues in the School and outside of it, to whom I’m very thankful.

Consultancy for European Commission (Part 2)

September 2023

Following a successful one-year collaboration with VVA and DG JUST, myself and colleagues from the Electoral Psychology Observatory (LSE) embarked on a second year consultancy for the European Commission in September 2023. This time our focus will be on developing a report on electoral turnout, best practices in member states and specific initiatives targeting populations with low voter turnout.

Postgraduate Research Convenor at OU

August 2023

In the new academic year, starting August 2023, I took on the role to co-convene the postgraduate programme at the OU. This gives me a chance to work more closely with our PhDs to build community and share experiences and tips for navigating PhD life.

OppAttune – Horizon Europe project begins

April 2023

In April 2023 the inception meeting for OppAttune was held in Athens, Greece. OppAttune received over €3 million in funding for participating multidisciplinary research teams, spread across higher-learning institutions in 15 European countries. OppAttune tracks the evolution of oppositional extreme ideologies and protectionist decision-making, develops an innovative attunement model and tests a series of interventions at the national and transnational levels which limit the spread of extremism. OppAttune revitalises trust in key democratic institutions. Its actions involve an on-line I-Attune self-test interactive to build democratic capacity across diverse publics. OppAttune will create an OppAttune Summer Academy for students and researchers (2025) and an OppAttune Winter Academy for practitioners and policymakers (2026). OppAttune provides micro, meso and macro level evidence-based recommendations and strategies designed to counter the potential of extreme narratives to disrupt democratic growth.

Presentation in UK Parliament

February 2023

In February 2023 we celebrated the three-year anniversary of the Electoral Psychology Observatory on Global Elections Day. The annniversary was celebrated with a research talk in UK Parliament. The event “The State of Electoral Hostility” was co-chaired by Sir Peter Bottomley (Father of the House, Conservative) and Dr Stella Creasy (Labour). More information on the event, and the powerpoint slides for our talks can be found here: https://www.epob.org/events/

Consultancy for Westminster Foundation for Democracy

January 2023

In the new year, January 2023, I embarked on another consultancy, this time a research project in partnership with LSE colleagues (Michael Bruter and Sarah Harrison) and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, funded by the FCDO (UK). The project “Analysing the electoral experience of first-time voters in Zambia and consider how it can be improved and optimised” involved travelling to Lusaka. Zambia, in February 2023 to develop research protocol tools, conduct focus group data analysis and report writing (March 2023).

Consultancy for European Commission

November 2022

In November 2022, I began a research consultancy project via LSE consulting for the European Commission (DG JUST) on Research services on issues pertaining to EU citizenship rights and democracy. My involvement mainly pertains to the development of a Type-C report on the electoral experience of citizens with disabilities. The consultancy runs until end of summer 2023.

Invited speaker: Edinburgh

October 2022

On the 13th of October 2022 I was an invited speaker at an event in Edinburgh, titled “The Political Positions Between Us: Can Psychology Depolarise the Public?”. The event welcomed a mixed audience with academics, government officials, members of the public and journalists. I spoke about the role of intragroup dialogue in depolarizing, thinking about the ways in which we can counter attempts at essentializing and stereotyping when we are talking to supposedly politically likeminded people about those who are ‘different’.

Aurora Leadership Programme

September 2022

In September 2022 I began the Aurora Leadership Programme run by AdvanceHE. I was selected among a large number of applicants from the OU to join the programme which focuses explicitly on developing leadership skills among women in higher education.