KEYNOTES

Dr. Siwar Hasan-Aslih

Dr. Hasan-Aslih is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her scholarship examines the social and psychological processes that sustain or challenge systems of power and oppression. Her recent work focuses on when and how collective action emerges in repressive contexts, how people respond to the repression of social movements, and patterns of American public opinion on the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. Siwar's work is informed by her lived experiences as a Palestinian and grounded in a commitment to justice and equality. She is dedicated to amplifying non-mainstream and marginalized perspectives in social science. Her scholarship has appeared in leading journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Social Psychological and Personality Science. Before joining UC Santa Cruz, Siwar was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She earned her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Groningen through a joint program with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Dr. James Druckman

Dr. Druckman is the Martin Brewer Anderson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester, and the 2025 winner of ISPP’s Harold Lasswell Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Political Psychology. His research focuses on political preference formation and communication. His work examines how citizens make political, economic, and social decisions in various contexts (e.g., settings with multiple competing messages, online information, deliberation). He also studies the relationship between citizens' preferences and public policy and the polarization of American society. He has published approximately 200 articles and book chapters and has authored, co-authored, or co-edited seven books, the most recent of which is titled Partisan Hostility and American Democracy: Explaining Political Divides (co-authored with S. Klar, Y. Krupnikov, M. Levendusky, and J.B. Ryan). He has served as editor of the journals Political Psychology and Public Opinion Quarterly and is a Co-Principal Investigator of the Civic Health and Institutions (CHIP50) Project.