Dr Emina Subasic

Biography

I arrived to Australia as a refugee from Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1997. In 1998, I commenced a Bachelor of Arts (Psychology) and Bachelor of Social Work at the University of Queensland, both of which I completed in 2002. In 2003, I moved to Canberra and completed a First Class Honours in Psychology at the Australian National University. I stayed at the ANU for the next 10 years, completing a PhD (2004-2008) and two post-doctoral fellowships (2006-2009) with Kate Reynolds and John Turner. In 2010, I became an ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellow (and lead investigator) on a Discovery Project examining the nexus of leadership and change in social relations. I was appointed as Lecturer at the University of Newcastle in late 2013 and commenced in July 2014. My research spans social, organizational and political psychology. It examines how people, groups and societies change. In this work, I argue that the psychological transformation of the self is at the core of change—that by changing identities we can change society. A central contribution of my most recent work has been to articulate how social influence and leadership intersect with self-categorization processes to make such change imaginable and (therefore) possible. I examine these ideas across a range of contexts, but particularly where mobilisation of political solidarity across traditional intergroup boundaries is called for.

Research Interest

Psychology