Dr Maika Telga

I graduated in 2012 with a BSc in Psychology from the University of Poitiers (France). I then obtained two MScs - one in Cognitive Neuroscience, and the other one in Social Psychology - from the University of Granada (Spain). I started my PhD in 2015, at the University of Granada, where I examined the attentional processes underlying social perception and learning in intergroup contexts. After graduating with my PhD in 2019, I obtained a 1-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Granada where I looked into the impact of perceivers' emotional states on the reliance of social heuristics in person perception. I then joined the University of St Andrews as a post-doctoral research fellow, leading the 'Virtual Reality' strand of the research project Perceived threats and 'stampedes': A relational model of collective responses to perceived threats. 

Throughout my career, I have been committed to disseminating my work, which has led me to publish in public-facing outlets such as The Conversation, be interviewed on radio programmes, or give talks in disseminating events. 

I joined the OU in 2022 as a technical lead, where I use the technical skillset acquired across different research projects to support research and teaching at the School of Psychology and Counselling. 

With a background in both cognitive and social psychology, I use a multidisciplinary approach to examine how intergroup contexts shape our vision of the world. My research primarily uses the principles of the Social Identity Theory to understand impression formation, social learning, and social influence in intergroup contexts. Across different research projects, I have also examined the contribution of associative and cognitive processes to these social phenomena