I am a social and political psychologist whose research seeks to support dialogue between citizens and their governments on vexed political questions such as migration, sovereignty, European and Global citizenship. I moved from the Scottish Government to the Open University in 2007. As a psychologist I am particularly interested in the conditions when people move from public opinion to public dialogue. My starting point is that public decision-making on migration, citizenship and the boundaries...

Expertise

Migration processes
Migration consequences (for migrants, sending and receiving countries)
Migration governance
Cross-cutting topics in migration research
Disciplines

Roles

  • British Psychological Society - Political Psychology Section

    Non-governmental Organisation, United Kingdom
    Chair-Elect

  • The Open University

    University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
    Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology

Research

Populism versus the people: How citizen's social representations of home destabilize national populism's territorial vision

Authors Kesi Mahendran, Anthony English, Sue Nieland
Year 2021
Journal Name Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology
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1 Journal Article

From Polarized We/They Public Opinion on European Integration Towards Social Representations of Public Dialogue

Authors Kesi Mahendran
Year 2018
Journal Name Political Psychology
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2 Journal Article

Public narratives on human mobility: Countering technocratic and humanitarian refugee narratives with a “one‐world” solidarity narrative

Authors Kesi Mahendran
Year 2017
Journal Name Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology
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3 Journal Article

Introduction: Discursive Governance: Operationalization and Applications

Authors Umut Korkut, Kesi Mahendran, Gregg Bucken-Knapp, ...
Year 2015
Book Title Discursive Governance in Politics, Policy, and the Public Sphere
5 Book Chapter

Public Narratives of European Citizenship—the Dialogical Citizen in the European Public Sphere

Authors Kesi Mahendran, Ima Jackson, Anubhuti Kapoor
Year 2015
Book Title Discursive Governance in Politics, Policy, and the Public Sphere
6 Book Chapter

Suggested Research

I’ll never forget: Remembering of past events within the Silent Generation as a challenge to the political mobilisation of nostalgia

Authors Sue Nieland, Kesi Mahendran, Sarah Crafter
Year 2022
Journal Name Culture & Psychology
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2 Journal Article

Reification and the Refugee: Using a Counterposing Dialogical Analysis to Unlock a Frozen Category

Authors Kesi Mahendran, Nicola Magnusson, Caroline Howarth, ...
Year 2019
Journal Name Journal of Social and Political Psychology
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3 Journal Article
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