The School of Psychology welcomes new member of staff, Dr Gulseli Baysu. Gulseli graduated with a BA in Psychology from the Middle East Technical University in 2001. This was followed by her MA in Political Science at Bilkent University in 2002, and two PhDs in psychology from Middle East Technical University (Turkey) in 2007 and University of Leuven (Belgium) in 2011.

She was a visiting fellow at the European Research Centre on Migration at Utrecht University between 2006-2007, and in the Department of Psychology at Sussex University in 2009. She has worked as an experienced researcher in several projects on immigration at the University of Leuven between 2007-2011. She previously worked at Kadir Has University, first as an assistant professor and then as an associate professor of social psychology. She is currently also an affiliated member of the Center for Social and Cultural Psychology at the University of Leuven.

As a social and political psychologist her research focuses on cultural diversity, migration and ethnic relations, particularly from the perspective of (immigrant) minorities and in relation to various outcomes ranging from educational success to political participation. Her research focuses on the role of cultural, racial/ethnic/religious and socioeconomic identities and contexts in explaining these relationships. She uses a wide variety of research methods from comparative, multi-level, longitudinal research designs and analyses to experimental and intervention studies.

In 2018, she worked for 6 months as a visiting professor at the Graduate Center of City University of New York, as a recipient of the Distinguished Visiting Fellowship award by the Graduate Center. She also received a grant from Jacobs Foundations as the Principal Investigator in a comparative project in Belgium and Germany. She and her collaborators aim to investigate cultural diversity approaches endorsed by schools and teachers, and their implications for students' adjustment and achievement. She is also planning school intervention studies manipulating different cultural diversity policies.

Another line of her research focuses on the political participation of immigrant minorities. She is currently investigating voting strategies of dual-citizen Turkish immigrants in Belgium and in Turkey, and how and whether their religious identity as Muslim plays a role in their strategies.

Please check out her latest research outputs.

Welcome to the School Gulseli!