Prof. Dr. Julia Elad-Strenger

She obtained her PhD in Psychology from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel in 2015. Subsequently she conducted postdoctoral research until 2017 at Reichman University in Israel at the Psychology of Intergroup Conflict & Reconciliation Lab. Between 2017 and 2018 she was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Department of Social Psychology at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität in Jena. From 2018 to 2025, Prof. Elad-Strenger was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

Prof. Dr. Elad-Strenger is a social and political psychologist whose work integrates social psychology, political behavior, and public opinion research. She investigates how individual dispositions, such as values, motivations and emotions, interact with group processes, such as social identities and norms, to shape socio-political attitudes and policy preferences. She focuses particularly on understanding the psychological mechanisms that drive extremist ideologies, anti-democratic attitudes, support for political violence and conflict dynamics in both international and domestic contexts. She employs a methodological approach that combines large-scale panel surveys with laboratory and field experiments, using comparative research designs across the Middle East, Western Europe, and the United States.

Prof. Elad-Strenger's research is grounded in interdisciplinary collaboration. She works alongside colleagues from psychology, political science, sociology, philosophy, law and related disciplines to analyse contemporary socio-political processes and develop evidence-based approaches to enhance democratic resilience. In her teaching, she encourages students to critically examine established narratives, apply state-of-the-art analytical methods and adopt empirically grounded perspectives on real-life socio-political dynamics.

Welcome, Professor Elad-Strenger!

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