Photo credit: The Open University
We asked Professor Eleni Andreouli about her journey to Professorship and The Open University.
‘One could say that my journey in psychology has followed a well-treaded path. But this would not capture my experience. When I started studying psychology in my hometown, Athens, in Greece, I absolutely believed that I was going to be a clinical psychologist and that I would explore people’s (and my own) deeper, unconscious desires and fears. I very quickly realised that this was not going to happen, not least because clinical psychology is much richer and more varied than what I thought at the time.
Instead, not long after I started my BSc in psychology, I become captivated by a very different area of psychology, social psychology. I was, and still am, fascinated by the multiple, unexpected ways, that the social context ‘makes’ us. I came to realise that the answers I sought in clinical psychology could also be provided by social psychology. The added benefit, for me, was that social psychology could both ‘open up’, by turning its gaze on different elements of the social context (relationships, cultures, histories, places and so on), and ‘narrow down’ by focusing on how the social manifests itself on local, individual experience.
From then on, I made up my mind that I was going to (try to) pursue a research career in social psychology. This meant doing postgraduate studies, including a PhD, after finishing my undergraduate degree. I was born and raised in Athens, so the option of moving abroad was both alien and scary in my early twenties. Still, under the influence of some peer pressure, I reluctantly decided to come to the UK, at least for a year.
Twenty years later, I am still here. I have found my home in London and in the British academic community. The journey has not been easy, with lots of job hunting, unsuccessful job applications, insecure and temporary employment, and all sorts of other rejections of my work. What has really helped along the way is the mentoring and encouragement I have received by others, like my PhD supervisor and many supportive colleagues. I eventually found my home in the School of Psychology & Counselling at the OU, amongst a group of very collegial and engaging peers.
During my time in the OU, I developed a particular interest in applying social psychology to understand political change. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the major turning point was Brexit which provoked a wide-ranging unravelling of ‘politics as usual’. From that starting point, over the past years, I have tried to develop a social psychological approach to understanding political turbulations from the perspectives of citizens in their local realities. How do people think politically and how do they make sense of political change? How are different systems of political reasoning, such as ideologies, become anchored into everyday thinking? And once, established into ‘common-sense’, how do they change?
These are some of the bigger questions that have motivated my research. To address them, I have found useful the idea of ‘everyday citizenship’ because it has helped me articulate a bottom-up, citizen-oriented approach, towards the political. But psychology only, and I as an individual researcher, can only go that far. Most of the time, I collaborate with colleagues from my discipline, such as members of the OU’s Open Psychology Research Centre, and also with colleagues from other social sciences and humanities across the world. Cross-disciplinary engagement has become one of the most interesting parts of my work. I have found inspiration in the research of scholars from political science, sociology, geography as well as education and youth studies. If this is something that interests you, you can read more about my work in my OU profile page.‘
OU Psychology & Counselling 