Rhiannon Turner

Rhiannon Turner is Professor of Social Psychology at Queen’s University Belfast. She did her undergraduate degree at Cardiff University, her Master’s degree at the University of Kent, her doctoral research at the University of Oxford, and hr postdoctoral research at the University of Birmingham. In 2007, she took up a lectureship at the University of Leeds, and she was appointed Chair at Queen’s University Belfast in 2012. The main focus of her research is intergroup relations, with a particular interest in direct and indirect forms of contact (such as extended, online, and imagined contact, and nostalgic recall of contact) as a means of changing intergroup attitudes and behaviour. She has published over 100 articles, chapters and books, including papers in American Psychologist, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Psychological Bulletin, and her research has been funded by grants from the British Academy, Economic and Social Research Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Global Challenges Research Fund, Leverhulme Trust and the National Institute for Health Research. She has won the British Psychological Science award for Outstanding Doctoral Research Contributions to Psychology, the Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology’s Robert B. Cialdini Award for contributions to field research in social psychology and, together with Richard Crisp, the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. She has held various editorial roles including Editor-in-Chief of the European Review of Social Psychology. She is currently on the editorial board of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, British Journal of Social Psychology, and Group Processes and Intergroup Relations. She is also a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. She featured in the BAFTA winning 2020 Channel 4 programme, The School That Tried To End Racism, and has given evidence on the value of diversifying the school curriculum to UK Parliament.