How beliefs become identities and how shared understandings can shape change in a digital age will be explored at a public lecture hosted by The University of Western Australia’s School of Psychological Science this month.
Professor Emma Thomas will deliver the 2026 Robin Winkler Lecture How Beliefs Become Movements: Mobilisation in the Digital Age on Wednesday 16 September.
A social psychologist at Flinders University in Adelaide, Professor Thomas is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Deputy Director of the Jeff Bleich Centre for Democracy and Disruptive Technology.
Her research focuses on understanding when, why and how people commit to engaging in violent and non-violent action to bring about a desired social change.
“Declining trust in institutions, political polarisation, conspiracy movements, online misinformation, protest mobilisation and political violence are often treated as separate challenges,” Professor Thomas said.
“Yet each can be understood as a fundamentally social phenomenon: groups of people developing shared understandings of the world, defining who ‘we’ are and acting collectively to advance or defend those identities.
“Understanding the dynamics of influence, group formation, and mobilisation to collective action is therefore critical to understanding some of the most pressing challenges facing contemporary democracies.”
Professor Thomas will draw on social psychological research to examine how beliefs become identities and how identities become action.
She will explore how interactions between people and the social environments in which they are placed can shape multiple pathways, highlighting the value of social identity approaches for understanding contemporary forms of collective behaviour in the digital age.
The annual lecture commemorates the work of Robin Winkler, a highly influential teacher and researcher whose work was guided by humanitarian values and a relentless questioning of accepted orthodoxies. He died at the age of 43 while heading the UWA Clinical Master’s program at the Psychology Clinic, which now bears his name.
The lecture will be held on Wednesday 16 September from 5.30pm to 7pm at the UWA Social Sciences Lecture Theatre. For more information or to register click here.