Jeremy Ginges is Professor in Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is an elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, and the Society of Experimental Social Psychology.
His work studying intergroup relations has been published in outlets such as Science, Nature Human Behaviour, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Psychological Science. His research has been covered extensively in the popular press, and has been used in briefings of policy makers including Congress and the White House in the U.S., and the House of Lords in the UK.
His research focuses on two related problems: how do humans decide whether to cooperate across cultural boundaries, and why do people sacrifice everything (their own lives, the lives of loved ones) for an abstract cause like nation or god? These questions may be seen as two sides of the same issue. To answer this question he runs controlled psychological field experiments in places around the world - like Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, or Indonesia - that oscillate between extreme conflict and surprising cooperation. Understanding what feeds into cooperation between groups, and what causes people to kill and die for a cause may help us to adjudicate the pressing problems all humans have to deal with including maintaining a sustainable environment, protecting rights of the vulnerable, and reducing conflict