Projects

Current project : Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Adolescence & Democracy 

 

IP-PAD (Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Adolescence & Democracy) addresses a timely and pressing societal question: how the developing cognition and brain of young adolescents influences how they process political information and their political behaviour. Across Europe, trust in democratic institutions is under pressure. Political polarization, disinformation, and declining voter turnout are eroding democratic resilience. At the same time, youth disengagement from politics is rising, and satisfaction with democracy is particularly low among younger generations.

 

These developments point to a structural challenge: if today’s adolescents become tomorrow’s disengaged citizens, the long-term health of liberal democracies is at risk. Yet despite their importance, we still know relatively little about how adolescents — especially those aged 11 to 21 — form political opinions and develop democratic commitments.

 

IP-PAD responds to this challenge by combining insights from political science, psychology, and neuroscience. It brings together traditionally separate literatures on political engagement and adolescent development, and seeks to understand how cognitive, emotional, and social processes shape political learning during adolescence. The project aims to establish an interdisciplinary knowledge base and train a new generation of researchers equipped to study political development across disciplinary boundaries.

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The project involves extensive collaborations between the following  universities and organizations : University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), University of Vienna (Austria), Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences (Greece),  Jagiellonian University (Poland) and Royal Holloway University of London (UK). Across all universities we have formed multidisciplinary supervisory teams with the participation of political scientists and political/social psychologists, cognitive and developmental neuroscientists and social scientists.  

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More details can be found here 

 

Currently project: Politics Embodied: the bodily experience of political emotions and its political consequences 

 

Dr Andrea Vik, with the support of the NOMIS Foundation, addresses a fundamental but overlooked question: How are political emotions experienced within the body, and what are the political implications of these embodied experiences? While emotions are increasingly recognized as central to political behavior, existing research often neglects their physical, embodied dimensions. We aim to fill this gap by integrating psychological theories of emotion with political science to examine the embodied experience of political emotions, by using and improving upon an established task imported from social-affective neuroscience (the emBODY tool, Nummenmaa et al, 2014).  
Specifically, our research tackles three key questions:
(1)    Whether political emotions are embodied differently than their non-political counterparts, speaking directly to the question of the nature of political emotions,
(2)    To what extent do individual political dispositions influence these embodied emotional experiences? 
(3)    How do variations in the embodied experiences of political emotions interact with political dispositions to affect political polarization and political participation?
 

Currently project: Feeling the body politic: interoception as a mechanism of political stress resilience

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Dr Mariana Von Mohr, with the support of the NOMIS Foundation, identifies and empirically validates for the first time a psychological mechanism of political resilience rooted in bodily awareness: interoception (i.e. the ability to perceive and trust one’s internal bodily signals) can act as a protective factor against the adverse health effects of political engagement.

•    Across three large studies (two pre-registered) over two US national elections, including longitudinal data collected before and after the 2024 U.S. Presidential elections (total N > 2,000), we demonstrate that individuals with higher interoceptive sensibility consistently report reduced emotional, physical, behavioural, and social health costs associated with politics. 
•    Crucially, this protective factor does not come at the expense of political engagement or efficacy. On the contrary, individuals high in interoceptive sensibility show greater political interest, participation, and optimism about the future –even in the wake of electoral loss following the 2024 Presidential Election– suggesting a pathway toward resilient democratic participation.
•    These effects were robust across the political divide and remained significant even when controlling for established emotion regulation strategies, as well as demographics and political variables. 

Our findings offer a new perspective on how bodily awareness can foster psychological resilience and sustain civic engagement in polarised societies. This work has broad interdisciplinary implications, spanning psychology, neuroscience, political science and public health, and may inform intervention efforts and public policy aimed at mitigating the societal costs of political stress. 
 

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Recently completed : The (trans)formation of a European sense of solidarity: Visceral politics and social belonging in a comparative European context

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In a complex world in which many feel a profound sense of alienation, how we create and maintain the social ties that bind us is an important question with profound consequences for national and international policy-makers. Generating a sense of solidarity in a cohesive community is central to the challenges facing Europe.

The project brought together a truly multidisciplinary team from five leading universities across four European countries in a novel and ambitious exploration of the complexities of Europeans’ sense of belonging and identity. It carefully integrated different methods, from literature studies and surveys to monitoring of social media and on-line and lab-based experiments. ​

The project was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, with the participation of:

• Prof. Andreas Roepstorff, University of Aarhus, School of Culture and Society, Interacting Minds Centre (PI), 

• Prof. Dr. Michael Pauen, Institut für Philosophie, Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt- Universität Berlin, 

• Dr. Dominika Kasprowicz, Department of Journalism, Media and Communication, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, 

• Prof. Dr. Manos Tsakiris, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, Great Britain & Centre for the Politics of Feelings & The Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 

• Prof. Dr. Laura Cram, NRLabs Neuropolitics Research, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, Great Britain