Hello SPSSI members,

My name is Zahra Mirnajafi, and I am very excited to be the new academic focus member of SPSSI’s Graduate Student Council. I am a third-year psychology Ph.D. student at the University of Queensland, Australia. Having completed both my undergraduate and master degrees in Southern California, I moved to Australia in 2017 to continue my graduate studies. My research interests center around advantage and disadvantage group processes. Specifically, exploring the role of perceived discrimination in fostering and undermining social identification processes amongst marginalized and privileged groups, and exploring the antecedents and outcomes of intra-minority solidarity.

Serving on the SPSSI Graduate Student Committee presents a unique opportunity by providing a platform to enhance the experiences of graduate students and facilitate our growth as researchers through methodology and teaching training. I feel passionate about this, as training in these domains can be a varied experience for graduate students depending on their university affiliations and their academic mentors. SPSSI provides a space for us to attenuate these differences by offering workshops that can help bridge gaps in training. While it is a small step, it is a step closer to creating a more equitable academic experience for graduate students. With this in mind, as part of the academic focus position, I will be continuing the SPSSI Graduate Student Writing Group. In this writing group, we check in weekly with each other about our progress, set future goals, and discuss a related topic for that week. We are currently discussing a chapter of Paul Silva’s book, How to write a lot, each week. If you are interested in joining, send me an email (z.mirnajafi@uq.net.au), we would love to have you join our writing group!

Planning is also underway for graduate student online seminars. Having attended them in the past and found them to be informative (for a sample of previous webinars click here), I am very excited to have the opportunity to help organize them. Stay tuned on the graduate student mailing list for these announcements. If you have topics, you would like to see discussed, or would like to lead a webinar, please let us know here.  

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