Dr. Sammyh Khan

Contact Details:
Telephone: (+44)(1382) 388258
Email: Sammyh Khan

Postal Address:
School of Psychology
The University of Dundee
Dundee
DD1 4HN
Scotland, UK

Biography

I did my PhD at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, with James Liu and Ronald Fischer, and investigated the structure and content of Hindu nationalism and its consequences for intergroup relations in India. My general research interests lie in the intersection of social, political and cultural psychology with a particular focus upon intergroup relations. My research combines both qualitative and quantitative methods.

I am currently working with Nicholas Hopkins and Stephen Reicher (University of St Andrews), and a team of researchers based in both the UK and India, investigating the psychological experience of participation in a large-scale collective event - the Magh Mela at Allahabad, India. The Mela is the largest religious festival in the world and has a history spanning centuries with millions of pilgrims participating each year.

The research project focuses on pilgrims who visit the Mela for its full period and aims to develop an understanding of the role of social identification in collective processes. It explores the transformations in social relations found in the Mela and how these transformations impact upon people's perceptions and experiences of respect, trust, cooperation and helping. The project also considers how this experience of collective events results in longer term consequences. These include the strengthening of people's commitment to certain identities and benefits for their individual health and well-being.

Professional Affiliations

Asian Association of Social Psychology (AASP)
British Psychological Society (BPS)
European Association of Social Psychology (EASP)
New Zealand Psychological Society (NZPS)

Publications:

Khan, S. S., & Sen, R (2009). Where are we going? Perspective on Hindu-Muslim relations in India. In C. J. Montiel & Noor, N. (Eds.), Peace Psychology in Asia (Volume 1). Springer.
Khan, S. S., & Liu, J. H. (2008). Intergroup attributions and ethnocentrism in the Indian Subcontinent: The ultimate attribution error revisited. Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology, 39 (1), pp, 16-36.
Liu, J.H., Paez, D., Hanke, K., Rosa, A., Hilton, D.J., Sibley, C., Khan, S. S. et al. (in press). Cross cultural dimensions of meaning in the evaluation of events in world history? Perceptions of historical calamities and progress in cross-cultural data from 30 societies. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
Sibley, C. G., Liu, J. H., & Khan, S. S. (2010). Implicit representations of ethnicity and nationhood in New Zealand: A function of symbolic or resource-specific policy attitudes? Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 10 (1), 23-46.
Sibley, C. G., Overall, J., Duckit, J., Milfont, T. L., Khan, S. S., Fischer, R., & Robertson, A. (2009). Your sexism predicts my sexism: Perceptions of men’s (but not women’s) sexism affects one’s own sexism over time. Sex Roles, 60 (9-10), pp, 682-693.
Sibley, C. G., Liu, J. H., & Khan, S. S. (2008). Who are 'we'? Implicit associations between ethnic and national symbols for Maori and Pakeha in New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 38(2), pp, 38-49.
Sibley, C. G., Liu, J. H., Duckitt, J., & Khan, S. S. (2008). Social representations of history and the legitimisation of social inequality: The form and function of historical negation. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38 (3), pp, 542-565.

Recent Presentations

Khan, S. S., & Liu, J. H. (2011, September). Hindutva: An examination of the content and intergroup consequences of Hindu nationalism in India. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Social Section of the British Psychological Society (BPS), Cambridge, United Kingdom.
S. S., Tewari, S., Singh, T., Pandey, K., & Shankar, S. (2011, July). ‘Living the good life’: On the antecedents and consequences of collective self-realization in the crowd. Paper presented at the 16th General Meeting of the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP), Stockholm, Sweden.
Khan, S. S., Tewari, S., Hopkins, N. P., & Reicher., S. D. (2011, May). Social identification and health: An Indian case study. Invited talk Psychology at University of Exeter, United Kingdom.