Rate My Professor Hanna Zagefka

Professor Hanna Zagefka serves as Dean of the Faculty of Science at Royal Holloway, University of London, a role she took up in 2025. She joined the university in 2005, following her academic beginnings in Germany, an MSc at the University of Kent, a PhD in social psychology from the same institution in 2004, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Sussex. Promoted to Professor of Social Psychology in 2017, she led the Department of Psychology as Head from 2022 to 2025. Zagefka has held several directorial positions at Royal Holloway, including Director of Ethics, Director of Student Recruitment, Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes, and Director of Teaching and Learning. She also serves as an Invited Visiting Professor at the University of Northampton, mentoring and coaching global majority staff, and has acted as External Examiner for undergraduate programmes at institutions such as Asia Pacific University, Goldsmiths University of London, and the University of Kent.

A leading social psychologist, Zagefka's research centers on intergroup relations, social identity, acculturation, prejudice, and behaviour change in contexts of intergroup helping. Her studies explore how group memberships shape perceptions, emotions, and actions, including why donations to disaster victims vary and how shared identities can boost charitable giving. Funded by the ESRC and Leverhulme Trust, her empirical work spans Europe, Asia, and the Americas, contributing to UN Sustainable Development Goals including good health, reduced inequalities, and peace. She co-edited the book Intergroup Helping (Springer) and has authored numerous articles in top journals, such as 'Unity in Diversity: Exploring the effect of oneness with humanity on the willingness to donate to Syrian and Ukrainian refugees' (Personality and Individual Differences, 2024), 'Blindspots in Acculturation Research: An Agenda for Studying Majority Culture Change' (European Review of Social Psychology, 2023), and 'Nuestra culpa: Collective guilt and shame as predictors of reparation towards historical outgroups' (2009). Zagefka is Chief Editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology, sits on editorial boards including the International Journal of Psychology, and chairs or panels for funding bodies like ESRC, FWO Flanders, National Science Centre Poland, and others. A Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Chartered Psychologist, her research has featured in BBC and The Economist, with projects like the Leverhulme Magna Carta Award on attitudes towards ethnic minorities.