Our seminars explore a wide selection of topics and feature guests from a range of different backgrounds.

All seminars take place in 10 West, Room 1.10 on our University of Bath campus at 12.15pm to 1.05pm, unless otherwise stated.

Upcoming seminars

Darja Wischerath (University of Bath)

Title: How conspiracy narratives enable violence
Date: 3 December 2025

In this seminar, Darja will discuss the following research:

Conspiracy narratives are ubiquitous in today’s information age, and some have been associated with violent events from harassment of healthcare workers to terrorist attacks. This talk explores how conspiracy narratives engage psychological needs, fuel emotions like anger and disgust, and reshape group norms, paving the pathway to radicalisation and violent action. Using digital trace data from YouTube, Parler, and Telegram, Darja Wischerath shows how spread of conspiracy narratives online can create the conditions for real-world harm.

Professor Mike Quayle (University of Limerick)

Title: How are social issue attitudes (e.g. about vaccines; climate etc.) absorbed into social identities? Social identity networks and identity compression in social information systems
Date: 10 December 2025

In this seminar, Professor Mike Quayle will discuss the following research:

Recent global events have demonstrated that beliefs and attitudes towards important social issues such as health or climate can easily become polarized and politicized; for example, the rising opposition to vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic. The question of how attitudes become identity-laden is thus fundamental. I argue that attitudes and opinions function as a distributed social information system in which traces of group identity are inscribed. Group-based alignment across multiple dimensions produces redundancies, and therefore information compressibility. This information structure allows people to 'read' group identity from minimal information. The ability to decode useful social information from this system depends on its compressibility in group terms.

I report evidence accumulated across multiple studies that: (1) group structure can be embedded in attitude systems; (2) people are dynamically positioned by the attitudes they express in relation to those expressed by others; (3) in structured attitude systems, people can perceive each-other's positions with minimal information; and (4) consequently, certain positions become "turf" belonging to one group or another. In such a system, expressing or engaging with opinions in outgroup territory carries the risk of misrecognition. The social effect of expressing — or being seen to hold — a particular set of opinions depends on those held by others in society.

I discuss the value of the framework for understanding identity ecosystems in which social group structure and attitudes are co-constituted. A key theoretical implication is that attitude change is also identity change—both at the personal level (where attitude expressions position individuals in the system) and at the social level (where the expressions of others constitute the social information system in which individuals are positioned).

Professor Ayse Uskul (University of Sussex)

Title: TBC
Date: 4 February 2026

Sarah Bennett (King's College London)

Title: TBC
Date: 11 February 2026

Sarah Dance (University of Bath)

Title: TBC
Date: 18 February 2026

Dr Ali Khatibi Tabatabaei (University of Bath)

Title: TBC
Date: 25 February 2026

Bihui Jin (University of Bath)

Title: TBC
Date: 4 March 2026

Professor Quentin Huys (University College London (UCL))

Title: TBC
Date: 11 March 2026

Jamie Chapman (University of Bath)

Title: TBC
Date: 18 March 2026

Yu Shuang Gan (University of Bath)

Title: TBC
Date: 25 March 2026

Dr Mark Horowitz (University College London (UCL))

Title: TBC
Date: 15 April 2026

Dr Joanna McHugh Power (Maynooth University)

Title: TBC
Date: 22 April March 2026

Professor Gerben van Kleef (University of Amsterdam)

Title: TBC
Date: 29 April March 2026

Previous seminars

Professor Louise Arseneault (King's College London) — A gateway to thousands of datasets from across the world: The Atlas of Longitudinal Datasets
Dr Emma Soneson (University of Oxford) — Understanding the role of school-based mental health support within adolescents’ wider networks of care
Dr Jon Roozenbeek (King's College London) — “Bad Bot” apocalypse: the online manipulation economy and how to disrupt it
[Dr Emily Rempel (University of Liverpool) — How to put trustworthiness into practice: Case Studies from the Liverpool City Region Civic Data Cooperative
Professor Tracey Wade (Flinders University) — Broadening our perspectives on early intervention in eating disorders
Dr Steve Westlake (University of Bath) — The power of leading by example on climate change
Professor Tim Smith, University of the Arts London — The attentional theory of cinematic continuity
Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado, University of Exeter — Children and Adolescent Mental Health: Public Health Aspects
Professor Ellen Townsend, University of Nottingham — Mental Health: Self harm
Professor Alison Heppenstall, University of Glasgow — Agent-Based Modeling for Understanding Urban Complexity
Dr Charles Ogunbode, University of Nottingham — Climate justice now! Examining public understanding of climate justice and the implications of climate justice beliefs for action and policy support

Department of Psychology seminars

We host experts in different areas of psychology, including academics and practitioners from around the world. View our upcoming seminars on this page.