Nihan is an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at Boğaziçi University in Türkiye.
She completed her PhD in Social Psychology at PBS, following a master’s in Applied Social Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London and a master’s in Neuroscience at King’s College London. Her doctoral research focused on how physical and psychological distance influences individual humanitarian responses to global emergencies, with a particular emphasis on the case of Syrian refugees. During her PhD, she served as a PhD Representative (2016–2018), helped organise departmental research seminars (2016/17), and worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant (2017–2020), teaching both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. These included Psychological and Behavioural Science, Research Methods for Psychological and Behavioural Science, and Social Psychology. She was also selected for the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues’ Graduate Student Committee, where she served as Membership Coordinator and Member-at-Large (2019/20).
Following her PhD, Nihan undertook a postdoctoral role at the Open Psychology Research Centre at the Open University. There, she contributed significantly to the launch of a Collaboration Lab aimed at enhancing the research experience for students and researchers. Her postdoctoral research focused on meta-science, examining psychologists' sample recruitment practices and their reporting and discussion of sample characteristics. During this time, she joined the British Psychological Society’s Social Psychology Section Committee (2022), where she has served as Honorary Treasurer since 2023.
Nihan’s research spans three different but related areas:
1. Prosocial behaviour: She explores how helping attitudes and behaviours are influenced by social, political, and contextual factors in intergroup contexts, especially during global emergencies.
2. Migration: Her work investigates societal attitudes and behaviours toward migrants, including refugees. She also examines how stereotypical beliefs and narratives about migrants impact societal perceptions and the wellbeing of migrants.
3. Meta-science: She focuses on improving the production, dissemination, and teaching of scientific knowledge. As an advocate for open science and decolonisation, she aims to make scientific processes more transparent, accessible, and socially just, addressing biases and promoting equity within scientific spaces.
Her contributions to the field have been recognised with prestigious grants from the British Psychological Society, the European Association of Social Psychology, the Psychology Postgraduate Affairs Group, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.
Awards
LSE Student Event Funding Competition Winner Prize (2020)
LSE Class Teacher Award for Learning Development (2018)
LSE Beveridge 2.0 Festival Research Competition Popular Prize (2018)