Francesco Rigoli is a social scientist based at City St George's, University of London. His research focuses on the psychological and cultural foundations of ideology and public opinion, exploring how cognitive and emotional processes shape political attitudes, belief systems, and societal trends. He has published widely on topics such as extremism, polarization, religion, and decision-making, combining insights from psychology, neuroscience, and political science. His current research focuses on characterising the narratives about war and security expressed by the public, the media, and by the elites, and on understanding how these narratives are influenced by social processes and shape these processes in return.  

Recent publications

Rigoli, F. (2025). Modernization and Ideological Polarization on a Global Scale. Cross-Cultural Research, 10693971251327738. 

Rigoli, F. (2025). Ideology shapes evaluation of history within the general population. Political Psychology, 46(1), 25-47. 

Rigoli, F. (2025). Neuroticism Is Linked With Liberal Ideology in Young, but not Old, People in the United States. International Social Science Journal. 

Roberto Stefan Foa is Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge, Co-Founder of the Centre for the Future of Democracy, Co-Founder of the Sephira Institute and elected Executive Committee member of the World Values Survey. His research examines public opinion, governance, and the use of novel data sources to address policy challenges. He is also interested in political methodology, including comparative polling, index construction, geospatial analysis, data harmonisation, and the use of AI to synthesise data from search, satellite and social media with conventional survey sources. His academic work has been published in journals including the British Journal of Political Science, Frontiers, Perspectives in Psychological Science, and PLoS One, and cited in publications including The Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, and the Guardian.

Recent publications

Foa, R. S., & Romero-Vidal, X. (2025). A Rally for Democracy? Authoritarian Resurgence, Ukraine, and Global Democratic Allegiance. Perspectives on Politics, 1-19. 

Hammoud-Gallego, O., Foa, R. S., & Romero-Vidal, X. (2025). News Cycles and Satisfaction With Democracy: How the Pandemic Short-Circuited Media Polarization. British Journal of Political Science, 55, e49. 

Foa, R. S., & Mounk, Y. (2025). Democratic norm erosion and partisanship in the United States. Democratization, 1-24. 

Dr. Özden Melis Uluğ is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Sussex, where she leads the Conflict and Collective Action (CoCoA) Lab. Her research examines how people understand, engage in, and respond to intergroup conflict, collective action, and social change. She studies the psychological factors that shape solidarity, allyship, and cooperation between advantaged and disadvantaged groups, with a particular emphasis on how group identities, emotions, and narratives influence action toward peace and justice. Her work bridges social psychology, political psychology, and peace/conflict studies. Through both qualitative and quantitative methods, she investigates how individuals and communities mobilize for social change, how they interpret intergroup inequalities, and how interventions can promote constructive engagement across group lines. She is especially interested in the voices of marginalised groups and in understanding how their perspectives can foster more inclusive approaches to conflict resolution.

Recent publications

Figueiredo, A., Baysu, G., Uluğ, Ö. M., & Psaltis, C. (2025). Social Cohesion in (Post‐) Conflict and Divided Societies: Recent Advances and Future Directions. European Journal of Social Psychology, 55(6), 967-978. 

Uluğ, Ö. M., Chayinska, M., Schreiber, J. A., & Taylor, L. K. (2024). A multi-dimensional typology of allyship action in violent intergroup conflict settings: Differentiating actor, target, and type of action. European Review of Social Psychology, 1-46.

Uluğ, Ö. M., Baysu, G., & Leidner, B. (2023). How does ingroup identification predict forgiveness in post‐conflict societies? The role of conflict narratives. British Journal of Social Psychology, 62(2), 910-931.  

Edgar Jones is based in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London. His research focuses of how people prepare for war, cope during combat and the long-term effects of conflict. He has studied civilian responses to aerial bombing during the Second World War and how they compared with lockdowns introduced to manage the spread of Covid-19. His current research includes risk and protective factors for psychological casualties from large-scale combat operations (LSCO) in Western Europe.

Recent publications

Edgar Jones (2021), COVID-19 and The Blitz compared: UK mental health outcomes. Lancet Psychiatry 8(8):708-716.

Edgar Jones (2020), The Psychology of Protecting the UK Public against external Threat: COVID-19 and the Blitz compared, Lancet Psychiatry 7: 991-96. 

E. Jones, R. Woolven, B. Durodié and S. Wessely (2004), Civilian Morale during World War Two: responses to air-raids re-examined, Social History of Medicine 17: 463-79. 

Jim Orford is Emeritus Professor of Clinical and Community Psychology at the University of Birmingham. Originally trained as a clinical psychologist, he later played a leading role in promoting community psychology in the UK and in Europe. He is a longstanding, internationally recognized researcher and writer on addiction and its effects on the family. He has campaigned for gambling reform and for better recognition of addiction-related family harm. His interests now lie as much in the area of political psychology, notably in understanding of support for war, and for acceptance of high levels of economic inequality. A theme of his work has been the identification of sources of justification for widespread harms caused by such as warfare, inequality, and addiction.

Recent publications

Orford, J. (2025). The Psychology of Economic Inequality: Six Reasons Why We Are Failing to Challenge Great Inequalities of Income and Wealth. London: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Open Access.

Orford, J. (2024). On the Warpath: The Psychology of Public Support for Armed Action. New York: Oxford University Press. 

Orford, J. (2020). The Gambling Establishment: Challenging the Power of the Modern Gambling Industry and Its Allies. Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge. 

Thomas Martin is a senior lecturer in politics and international studies at The Open University. His research is interested in the security politics of the Global North, and particularly the national security politics of the UK. He is the co-founder and co-convenor of the BISA 'Security Policy and Practice' working group, a group which promotes dialogue and facilitates collaboration between academic, policymaking and practitioner communities. His current research is focused on understanding the diverse ways in which British publics, policymakers, and key stakeholders, such as the peace and security NGO community, experience and understand security, asking to what extent the public supports existing policy approaches, and to what extent public debates on security capture the diversity of perspectives held by UK citizens.

Recent publications

Martin, T., Schweiger, E., & Ritchie, N. (2025). The limits of national security and foreign policy orthodoxy: Labour’s challenge to UK policy under Jeremy Corbyn. Critical Studies on Security, 1–27.

Martin, T. (2025). Vernacular Security and National Security: The Challenges of Translation and the Potential of Security Frameworks. In: Jarvis, L., Lister, M., Oyawale, A. (eds) New Directions in Vernacular Security Research. Palgrave Macmillan.

Martin, T. (forthcoming, 2026), 'Public Engagement and Opinion'. In: Briffa, H. & Devanny, J. (eds) National Security under Labour. Palgrave Macmillan.

Veronica Anghel is a political scientist based at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute. She is a Co-director of the European Governance and Politics Programme and leads the 'Global risk to the EU' project. Her current research focuses on the European Union’s geopolitical role in the global order, and European integration and enlargement. She is also a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe and an Associate Editor for the Journal of European Public Policy. She has been awarded the Inaugural ‘Rising Star’ Award of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) in 2021.

Recent publications

Anghel, V. (2025). Why the EU is a geopolitical power: wartime enlargement, integration, and reform. Journal of European Public Policy, 32(12), 2862–2885. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2025.2558974 

Anghel, V., & Jones, E. (2025). From Club to Commons: Enlargement, Reform and Sustainability in European Integration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Anghel, V., & Radchenko, S. (2025). Europe’s Delayed Reckoning With Russia:  A Plan to Beat the Kremlin on Its Own Terms. Foreign Affairs.