Dr Samuel Pehrson

Dr Samuel Pehrson

Lecturer

Researcher profile

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 2035
Email
sdp21@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

Research areas

My overarching interest is in the role of social categories such as nation, ethnicity, class and religion in social and political life. I completed my doctoral research at the University of Sussex in 2009 and held positions at the University of Limerick and Queen’s University Belfast before coming to St Andrews as a lecturer in 2015.

Most of my current research falls into two main areas:

Racism and the politics of immigration

My initial work on this topic investigated the relationship between national identity and negative attitudes towards immigrants, arguing that this relationship needed to be understood in terms of the variable meanings and definitions of particular national groups, rather than as a generic mechanism linking the strength of ingroup identity to prejudice. Since then, I have been exploring the application of Herbert Blumer’s classic work on subjective group position in understanding anti-immigrant opinions. My ongoing work investigates this mainly in the UK context, with a focus on how socioeconomic inequalities shape how people perceive and respond to immigration.

Social psychology of religion

I’m interested in how people draw on religious ideas and practices in making sense of the social world, including social categories and matters of social justice. My research in this area has mainly been on Buddhism in various contexts and has included studies of resistance in Tibet, and the Ambedkarite Buddhist movement in India.

PhD supervision

  • Carrie Hall
  • Samata Shinde

Selected publications

 

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