Student Meetup with Laura Taylor

SEC Event: "Ask the Editor: A Conversation with Laura K. Taylor, the Editor of Peace & Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology"

Written by Alma Jeftić , Student and Early Career Chair

On Friday, January 27th, the Student and Early Career Committee of Division 48 hosted an online event with Professor Laura K. Taylor.  

"Ask the Editor: A Conversation with Laura K. Taylor, the Editor of Peace & Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology" was organised as a live discussion with Professor Taylor. The discussion was related to publishing, academic journals in general, role of the editorial board, meaning of revise & resubmit (R&R), reviews and reviewers, and preregistration in psychological science.  

Laura K. Taylor (Ph.D.) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology at University College Dublin and an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology at Queen's University Belfast. She integrates developmental and social psychology with peace studies to examine positive development and social inclusion among children and youth in conflict-affected settings, such as Colombia, Croatia, Kosovo, Israel, the Republic of North Macedonia, and Northern Ireland. She uses the Developmental Peacebuilding Model (Taylor, 2020) to study how multiple factors (e.g., family, school, nation) influence child development. Laura also focuses on children’s and youth’s agency, specifically, how outgroup prosociality toward conflict rivals may contribute to peacebuilding. Laura’s current research is funded by the EU H2020, Irish Research Council, Enterprise Ireland, John F. Templeton Foundation. She has over 80 peer-reviewed articles, almost half with student co-authors. Laura is a Consulting Editor for Child Development and the Journal of Research on Adolescence and the Editor of the APA journal Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. 

The topics that sparked the most interest included the publication process, preregistration of quantitative and qualitative studies, and roles of the editorial board and reviewers. Having in mind that, the Student and Early Career Committee plans to organise more open events related to current trends in psychological science, which can include (but are not limited to): how to complete pre registration and significant ethical concerns that may occur, how to prepare research/project proposal in social (peace) psychology, advanced statistical methods in social (peace) psychology, and similar. Such educational workshops are aimed at both junior and senior-level students. 

We are using this opportunity to thank Dr. Taylor for her inspiring talk!