Media release : Psychology’s most shocking experiment revisited in upcoming Milgram obedience conference
5th July, 2013
None of us would inflict pain on someone else simply because someone in a position of authority told us to, right? Wrong, according to social psychologist Stanley Milgram.
In Milgram’s controversial 1961 Yale experiments most ordinary people obeyed instructions and gave what they believed were dangerous and perhaps even fatal electric shocks to a stranger they’d just met. Milgram’s shocking results and what many saw as his unethical methods created immediate and lasting controversy. It’s a controversy that continues today.
Now 50 years after they were first published, the legacy of social psychology’s most famous and controversial experiment is the topic of a world-first conference in Canada in August. And it’s a gathering that’s attracting Milgram experts from around the globe.
Read the rest of the media release…
Background to the conference
The Obedience to Authority conference came about as a result of a conversation at the 2012 Cheiron conference. After a panel discussion on Milgram’s obedience research, the four panellists – Nestar Russell, Gina Perry, Dr Stephen Gibson and Dr Ian Nicholson – agreed that a conference on the topic was long overdue.
Nipissing University has enthusiastically supported the conference, and are hosting it at the university’s new state-of-the-art conference facility at the Muskoka campus in Bracebridge.
A committed and hard-working conference committee has been established to help plan and organize the conference and ensure that it’s an event that attracts researchers from around the globe.
Co-Convenor
Dr. Nestar Russell specializes in the Obedience studies and the Holocaust and completed a PhD on this topic in 2009. He has published on the Obedience studies in the British Journal of Social Psychology and The American Review of Public Administration. Nestar teaches criminology, sociology and history at Nipissing University.
Co-Convenor
Gina Perry is the author of Behind the shock machine. The untold story of the notorious Milgram psychology experiments (2012). Her ABC Radio National documentary on Milgram’s research won Silver world medal in the New York Festival Radio awards. She teaches at the University of Melbourne.
Hilary Earl is Associate Professor of European History at Nipissing University, North Bay, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Earl has published extensively on genocide, war crimes trials, and perpetrator testimony. Her book, The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945-1958: Atrocity, Law, and History (2009), won the 2010 Hans Rosenberg prize. She is currently working on an examination of the reintegration of war criminals back into German (and Canadian) society.
Dr. Mark Crane is a cultural historian of Renaissance and Reformation Europe. He has taught History, Latin, and Greek at Nipissing University since 2004.
Dr. Susan Cahill is Assistant Professor (Art History & Visual Studies) at Nipissing University. Her research includes the art of war and surveillance, issues of museum representation and display, and feminist craft practices and globalization.
A conference program committee comprised of Dr Stephen Gibson, Dr Ian Nicholson, Nestar Russell and Gina Perry are co-ordinating the program and presentations.
Conference program sponsors include Nipissing University, Inn at the Falls, and Nipissing University Peace Research Initiative.