Project Information
Project Title
"Building a Kosovar Identity: How intergroup contact affects Social Identity Complexity and intergroup relations"
Institute
Leiden University - Social and Organizational Psychology
PhD Student
Edona Maloku Berdyna
Supervisor(s)
Prof.dr. Naomi Ellemers (Leiden University)
Dr. Belle Derks (Leiden University)
Dr. Colette van Laar (Leiden University)
Period
1 October 2013 - 1 October 2017
Funding
NFP - Netherlands Fellowship Programmes
Summary
This Ph.D. project examines the effects of holding multiple social identities on intergroup relations in a post-conflict context. The country where the studies will be done, Kosovo, is of particular interest to research on social identity because of its profound social changes over the past 2 decades. The succession from former Yugoslavia and declaration of independence in 2008 led to the creation of the newest national identity in Europe, the Kosovar Identity, as an overarching identity that gathers various ethnicities and religions with an armed conflict past. The two main ethnic groups, Albanian majority and Serb minority, continue to have very limited intergroup relations, or none. In the current project we build on insights from Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and Social Identity Complexity Theory (Roccas & Brewer, 2002) to develop new ways for people in this context to perceive the novel national identity as inclusive of all ethnic groups, and thus, less threatening to ethnic identity.
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