University of Amsterdam (UvA) NL

Specific Department: Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences.

Main individuals carrying out task

(1)  Dr. Eftychia Stamkou, Asst. Professor, Social Psychology, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences.

(2)  Prof. Dr. Gerben van Kleef, Professor and Head of Social Psychology, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences.

Main tasks

Member of PMT (Stamkou) that coordinates the large scale multidimensional analyses. As leader of the Workpackage 5 UvA will be responsible for planning, executing, and overseeing all studies related to artists in society (WP5), including artist interviews and creation of WP5 report for use in reporting to EU and also for future policy planning (WP8-9). Will lend expertise for all cross-cultural assessments and related data analysis and paper writing and help consider artistic interventions. Will also take the lead in all studies relating to the European Values Survey. 

General Description

The University of Amsterdam (UvA; founded in 1632) with more than 3,000 PhD researchers, 6,000 employees, 32,000 students, and an annual budget of €850 million is one of the world’s intellectual hubs. With an annual output of 550 PhD -degrees and 9,500 scientific articles, the UvA is one of the largest research universities in Europe. The UvA has been awarded the HR Excellence Logo by the European Commission.

The UvA is consistently ranked among the world’s best universities—57th worldwide (QS World University Rankings).

The setting for the project, the Department of Psychology, is equally outstanding--ranked 1st in Europe and 17th worldwide (QS World University Rankings for Psychology). The Psychology Department comprises six research groups: Brain and Cognition, Clinical, Developmental, Methods, Work and Organizational, and Social Psychology. Within the Social Psychology group, headed by Prof. Gerben, A. Van Kleef and also home to Dr. Stamkou, there is a special emphasis on the role of social and cultural factors on human psychological processes as well as prosocial behavior. Professor Van Kleef led a professorship (2014-16) on prosocial behavior on behalf of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Stamkou and Professor Van Kleef have advanced and empirically tested a theoretical model explaining artistic impact. Their research on artistic impact was published in the highest-ranking empirical journal of Social Psychology and pioneered a field of research on the potential of innovative artistic movements to gain ground. One of the central themes of their research is cross-cultural differences in social-psychological processes. In this line of research, they use advanced analysis methods to synthesize data at different levels (e.g., multilevel structural equation modelling and meta-analysis). They currently collaborate closely with one of the most important scholars in cross- cultural psychology, Professor Michele Gelfand, to advance a theory about the influence of cultural values on the development of artistic movements in diverse societies.

 Main individuals carrying out research
Dr. Eftychia Stamkou
Significant infrastructure and/or items of technical equipment

The Department of Psychology provides an infrastructure exceeding all of the needs for the project and WPs. This includes video-labs with one-way-screens, state-of-the-art statistical software (e.g., MPlus, SOREMO, NVivo), and access to research assistants. Data collection opportunities are broad and well-structured, since undergraduates are obliged to take part in at least ten hours of experiments and during the so-called “test- weeks” there is the opportunity to collect data from a large sample within a week. Finally, the Department of Psychology has its own Technical Support team that helps researchers with complex experiment designs for instance involving video recording. All named researchers and staff hired for this project will be given office space and computers and have full access to all research facilities, and free access to the University Library and electronic resources.

Currently, the UvA is participating in 187 research and training programs under the framework of H 2020 (56 ERC projects, 45 MSCA-IF fellowships, 19 MSCA collaborative project, 56 Research and Innovation Actions, 4 Innovation Actions, and 7 Coordination Support Actions). The Faculty of Behavioural Science (FMG) of the UvA is awarded a large number of competitive research grants every year. Much of the research carried out at the Social Psychology Group has also been supported by external grants (e.g., ERC Starting grant to Dr. Sauter, VENI grant to Dr. Oosterwijk, VIDI grant to Prof. Van Kleef, and VICI grant to Prof. Amodio).