Katherine Starzyk, Ph.D., is a Polish-Canadian Associate Professor in Social and Personality Psychology at the University of Manitoba and Director of the Social Justice Laboratory. She is also a Founding Member of the Centre for Human Rights Research and a Research Affiliate of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and the Centre for Social Science Research & Policy. She aims to understand how to shift attitudes toward past and present human rights issues. At present, Katherine is responsible for the Canadian Reconciliation Barometer project. Funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant, the goal of the project is to develop a measure of reconciliation that is acceptable to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples. To this project, Katherine brings her expertise in psychometrics, the science of psychological measurement, and intergroup relations, as well as experience managing large projects. Such a tool is one way to track progress toward reconciliation as Canada works to resolve the serious and varied past and present harms perpetrated against Indigenous Peoples. Dr. Starzyk is also involved in the Spectrum project, a social policy evaluation collaborative team, and has several other projects on the go.

AREAS OF EXPERTISE: Reconciliation, intergroup relations, collective action, social justice, psychometrics, personality.

CURRENT RESEARCH INTERESTS: Reconciliation, intergroup relations, solidarity, collective action, social justice, psychometrics, personality.

Frequently working with multidisciplinary teams of collaborators, I aim to understand when people are likely to become concerned about current or past human rights issues as well as how various “frames” of such issues affect intergroup relations, with the goal of making both theoretical and applied contributions. Aside from the usual methods (i.e., experimental, correlational, and survey) and analytic approaches in Psychology (i.e., quantitative, including advanced methods such as structural equation modelling), I’m increasingly also working with large data sets from public polls, conducting focus groups and interviews, and completing qualitative and archival analyses. Students working with me tend to focus on related issues. Prospective students who are familiar with Indigenous knowledges and experiences should highlight that when reaching out. Please see http://katherinestarzyk.com for more information. Though my preference is to supervise students in Social and Personality Psychology (I’m a member of this program), I’m also sometimes able to supervise students in Clinical Psychology (Department of Psychology; I can only admit to this program in some years), Master in Human Rights (Faculty of Law), and Peace and Conflict Studies (Arthur V. Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice).