Speakers

Professor of Social Psychology,
University of Maryland, Baltimore

Dr. Thomas Blass is the author of the first and only biography of Stanley Milgram. He has published over 20 publications and an equal number of conference papers on Milgram’s life and work. He was awarded the J.R. Kantor Fellowship by the Archives of the History of American Psychology, and in 2001 gave the American Psychological Association’s prestigious G. Stanley Hall lecture. He has recently been elected to Fellow status by the American Psychological Association and is on the Editorial Board of the journal, Social Influence.

Emeritus Professor of Psychology,
Miami University, Ohio

Professor Miller is the author of The Obedience Experiments: A Case Study of Controversy in Social Science (1986) .

Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics Emeritus

Dr Herbert Kelman is the recipient of many awards and his major publications include Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility (with V.Lee Hamilton; 1989).

Author and psychologist,
University of Melbourne

Gina Perry is a psychologist and writer.  Her co-production of the ABC Radio National documentary about the obedience experiments won the Silver World Medal  in the New York Festivals radio awards. Her book about Milgram’s experiments Behind the shock machine. The untold story of the notorious Milgram psychology experiments will be published by The New Press in September 2013.

Stanford Federal Credit Union Professor of Humanities and Sciences ,
Stanford University

Professor Ross is a social psychologist who has studied attribution theory, attributional biases, decision making and conflict resolution. He is well-known for his investigations of the fundamental attribution error, and for identifications and analyses of such psychological phenomena as attitude polarization, reactive devaluation, belief perseverance, the false consensus effect, naive realism, and the hostile media effect. Instead of limiting his research to a laboratory, he has a wide variety of interest in global issues such as climate change and the legal system.

Professor Emeritus of Sociology ,
University of Calgary

Augustine Brannigan’s research interests include crime and delinquency, genocide, social psychology and the sociology of science. His new book is Beyond the Banality of Evil: Criminology, Genocide and the Legal Consequences.

Former research assistant,
Yale University

While a graduate student at Yale, Taketo was Stanley Milgram’s research assistant from 1962-3, analyzing ‘Obedience to Authority’ data and also participating in a ‘Lost letter ‘ study in North Carolina.

Professor of Organisational Sociology ,
University of Bielefeld

Stefan Kühl studied Sociology and History at the University of Bielefeld, Johns Hopkins University, Université Paris-X-Nanterre  and Oxford. Having completed his Ph.D. in Sociology he taught at the Université de Bangui (Central African Republic) where he founded the Consulting Firm Centra Consult. His recent research is a sociological analysis of the killings of the Reserve Police Battalion 101.

Social psychologist and author,
Resources for Independent Thinking

Sharon Presley has written and spoken extensively on obedience and resistance to authority. She received her Ph.D. in social psychology from the City University of New York where her mentor was Stanley Milgram. She has recently retired from California State University. She is the founder and Executive Director of Resources for Independent Thinking, a nonprofit educational organization. She is co-editor of Exquisite Rebel: Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre and author of Standing Up to Experts and Authorities: How to Avoid Being Intimidated, Manipulated, and Abused.

Professor of Psychology,
University of Calgary

Dr. Stam is the founder and current editor of the journal Theory & Psychology. He has served as President of the Canadian Peace Research and Education Association and  President of Division 24 (Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology) of the American Psychological Association.

Kenan Professor of Psychology,
Carleton College

Neil Lutsky (Ph.D. in social psychology, Harvard University) is the Kenan Professor of Psychology at Carleton College (Northfield, MN, USA). He was the 2011 recipient of the American Psychological Foundation’s Charles Brewer Distinguished Teaching of Psychology Award.

Post Doctoral Fellow,
Nipissing University

Dr. Russell specializes in the Obedience studies and the Holocaust and completed his PhD on the topic in 2009. He has published on the Obedience studies in the British Journal of Social Psychology, and the American Review of Public Administration.

Professor of Psychology,
Kenyon College

Allan Fenigstein joined the Kenyon College faculty in 1974, after earning his Ph.D. at UT-Austin. His research has dealt with media violence and aggression, the evolution of human sexuality, self-consciousness, paranoid behavior, and the psychology of genocide. He is currently studying self-deception.

Professor of Psychology,
Wesleyan University

Jill Morawski is the Wilbur Fisk Osborne Professor of Psychology at Wesleyan University where she also serves on the Science in Society Program and the Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program. She is past President of APA Division 24, Philosophy of Psychology; and Divison 26, History of Psychology..

Lecturer,
Institut des Hautes Études Économiques et Commerciales, Paris

A clinical psychologist and activist Yosef began his career in NYC’s public hospitals and courts and now teaches interdisciplinary courses at the Institut des Hautes Études Économiques et Commerciales in Paris, where he also has a private practice. He is currently working on a book applying the Milgram obedience experiments to contemporary corporate power, consumerism, and climate change.

Wicklander Chair of Business Ethics & Professor Emeritus,
DePaul University & University of Virginia

Patricia H. Werhane’s latest book is Obstacles to Ethical Decision-Making: Mental Models, Milgram and the Problem of Obedience, with Hartman, Archer, Englehardt and Pritchard, Cambridge University Press, 2013. 

Professor,
Utrecht & Tilburg Universities

Wim Meeus is professor of Adolescent Development at Utrecht University and of Developmental Psychology at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. His work on administrative obedience (with Quinten Raaijmakers) has been published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Journal of Social Issues, Zeitschrift für Sozialpsychologie and various other Dutch and European sources.

Social Psychologist,
York St John University, UK

Stephen’s interest in the obedience experiments involves the application of methods from discursive and rhetorical psychology to the archived audio recordings from the experiments. This work has been published in the British Journal of Social Psychology and History of Psychology (in press).

Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Michigan State University

Harry Perlstadt is a medical sociologist who has evaluated a variety of health programs and initiatives. He served as director of the Program in Bioethics, Humanities and Society at Michigan State University. He is currently working on a book examining the research ethics of the Milgram, Humphreys and Zimbardo studies.

Associate Professor of Psychology,
State Academic University for the Humanities, Moscow

Alexander Voronov has been teaching social psychology in two of Russia’s top ranked universities since the 1990s. He has been disseminating Milgram’s obedience research in Russia including presenting Milgram’s documentary on Russian national TV. He has published research on the role of personal and demographic traits in destructive obedience and resistance to authority in Russia.

Professor of Psychology,
St Thomas University, New Brunswick, Canada

Ian Nicholson  is editor of the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences and Fellow of the American Psychological Association. Ian has published widely in the history of psychology including Inventing Personality: Gordon Allport and the Science of Selfhood. Ian’s interest is in the ethics and historical context of Milgram’s obedience research.

Professor of Psychology,
US Air force Academy

George Mastroianni is especially interested in the role of the Milgram and Zimbardo studies in officer development and leader education. A retired US Army psychologist, Dr. Mastroianni led the effort to produce A Warrior’s Guide to Psychology and Performance: What You Should Know About Yourself and Others, a book read by all cadets at both West Point and the Air Force Academy. He has published on both the Milgram studies and the relationship between the Stanford prison study and the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Associate Professor of Philosophy,
Montclair State University

Chris has written on the Milgram experiments and deception in the social sciences including ethnography, sociology, and psychology. He is Editor of the Journal Theoretical & Applied Ethics. His research interests include research ethics and ancient philosophy.

Professor ,
Suffolk University Law School

Andrew teaches and writes in the areas of professional responsibility, civil procedure, and federal courts.  His scholarship has examined social psychology’s implications for legal ethics, including lawyers’ willingness to obey authority figures, such as partners and important clients.  He is an honors graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, and he received his LL.M from Columbia University Law School.

Associate Professor,
Laurentian University, Ontario

Michael is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and also teaches regularly in Laurentian’s Interdisciplinary Masters in Interpretation and Values and in its Interdisciplinary PhD in Human Studies.

Lecturer,
University of California

Kenneth Worthy, Ph.D. is research associate and lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and lecturer at St. Mary’s College of California. An environmental humanities scholar, he is interested in the contexts of everyday modern life that lead people to make environmentally damaging choices, including their destructive obedience to various forms of modern authority.

Assistant Professor ,
University of Bologna, Italy

Stefano Passini has a PhD in Social Psychology. His studies are focused on authoritarian attitudes, obedience and disobedience to authority and crimes of obedience, moral inclusion/exclusion processes, and human rights.

Associate Professor of European History,
Nipissing University

Hilary 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. 

Clinical Psychologist,
Connecticut

As a Summer School Scholar at Princeton in 1965 and later at the Max-Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich,  David replicated the Milgram experiment.  In 1974, he returned to the US and settled in Connecticut where he established a private practice in clinical forensic psychology. He has taught forensic psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice for the past 12 years.

Adjunct Professor of Politics,
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Robert Gregory is a graduate of Victoria University of Wellington and of the John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He has published widely in the fields of public policy, public administration and management. His teaching focuses on the nature and exercise of bureaucratic power in the modern state. He has also had a long-standing teaching and research interest in Milgram’s obedience experiments, co-authoring with Nestar Russell two articles on the subject in the American Review of Public Administration (2005 and 2011).

Professor

Prof. Clifford Stott is a crowd psychologist who specialises in understanding and managing intergroup conflict during crowd events. He conducted a ‘journalistic replication’ of the Milgram paradigm for the BBC’s science programme, Horizon.

Professor, retired,
NY Institute of Technology

Edward Erdos has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from NYU and a Masters in Psychology from the New School. Before retiring he was professor at NY Institute of Technology and a computer professional.

Professor of Social Psychology,
Grenoble-Alpes University, France

Laurent Begue was visiting professor at Stanford University. He has authored more that 50 chapters, books and papers in various journals such as Psychological Bulletin, Journal of Personality, and Journal of Experimental Social psychology. He is interested in the role of belief systems in destructive behavior.

Assistant Professor,
Oakland University

Dr. Zeigler-Hill is a social-personality psychologist who studies the darker elements of personality including fragile self-esteem and narcissism. His recent work has included studies concerning the role that personality features play in destructive obedience.

Psychology Lecturer,
Oakland University

Ashton is a graduate student at the University of Southern Mississippi studying social and personality psychology. Her research focuses on darker aspects of personality including narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. She is currently investigating the role of personality in destructive obedience.

Assistant Professor ,
University of Virginia

Bidhan ‘Bobby’ Parmar is Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the Darden School of Business. He studies how managers make decisions in uncertain and changing environments. His work helps executives better handle ambiguity in their decision making. His recent research examines the impact of authority on moral decision making in organisations.

PhD student,
Grenoble-Alpes University, France

Johan Lepage is PhD Student in experimental social psychology. His main research interest is to understand the link between ideology and destructive obedience. He is currently investigating the effects of the motivational and neurocognitive underpinnings of conservatism on empathy for the victim and obedience, and how ideological environment contribute to destructive obedience.

Lecturer in Psychology,
London School of Economics

Alex Gillespie (PhD Social Psychology, University of Cambridge) is a Lecturer in Psychology at the London School of Economics and Co-Editor of Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. He has published on social interaction, trust, identity and communication and has a longstanding interest in Milgram’s concept of Cyranoids.

PhD student,
London School of Economics

Kevin Corti’s research investigates Milgram’s “cyranic illusion” and how it can be applied as an experimental tool to investigate the effects of status and power in group communication and economic negotiation.  

Assistant Professor, Sociology,
University of Manitoba

Christopher is a social theorist whose work examines violence and nonviolent social change. He is the author of Barbaric Civilization: A Critical Sociology of Genocide (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), which explores the systemic roots of genocide in the normal institutions of Western civilization. His next project will be to examine how Occupy and other radically egalitarian social movements resolve difference without fixed organizational hierarchies.

Professor,
Arcadia University

Marianne Miserandino is a social psychologist, whose research area is self-determination theory. She has had a long interest in compliance, and is the author of Personality Psychology: Foundations and Findings (Pearson, 2011).

Graduate,
Arcadia University

Jessica Leathem is a 2012 graduate of Arcadia University with a B.A. in Psychology. She will start a doctoral program in Physical Therapy in the fall at Columbia University.

Lecturer ,
Laurentian University, Ontario

Anas Karzai is a full time member in the sociology department at Laurentian University. His teaching focuses on social and political theory, war, refugees, exile and critical globalization theories. He has published articles on Empire, war and culture. Currently, he is writing a book on “An Introduction to Nietzsche’s Social and Political Theory” (Forthcoming, 2013, Lexington Books).

Author,
EthicsDefined.org

Lawrence Sheraton is the author of EthicsDefined.org. He has spent most of his career in corporate America. He writes on matters of ethics and corporate ethics. He is currently working on a series of sculptures titled, “The Human Condition”, as well as a book on corporate ethics.

Course Director,
York University, Toronto

Michelle Ciurria is an upper-level PhD student and Course Director at York University. Her specializations are theoretical and practical ethics, and social and political philosophy.

PhD candidate,
London Consortium (Birkbeck)

Maya is a design historian and teaches at the School of Design (London Metropolitan University) and co-convenes research seminars across the Royal College of Art and the University of London. Maya is also a PhD candidate at the London Consortium (Birkbeck): her research applies a critical design lens to Milgram’s Obedience studies, particularly the dramaturgy of devices and aspects of simulated technology.

Associate Professor,
Nipissing University

Sarah Winters is Associate Professor of English. She teaches children’s literature and has published on the representation of evil in post-war children’s fantasy.

BA/MA candidate,
Wesleyan University

Ethan is a BA/MA candidate in Psychology at Wesleyan University. His research areas include Buddhist psychology, the dissemination of psychological knowledge, the psychology of grief, and the history of political psychology.

Graduate,
Arcadia University

Harrison Stoll is a 2013 graduate of Arcadia University with a B.A. in Psychology. He will enter a M.A. program in Psychology in the fall at Villanova University.

Adjunct Professor,
Arcadia University

Adam Levy teaches abnormal psychology, group psychotherapy, and other courses at Arcadia. His research interest is compliance and obedience. Along with Marianne Miserandino and a team of undergraduate students, they hope to test the impact of variations in social pressures.

Graduate student,
Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Tom Damen’s main focus for his PhD project is the conscious awareness of self-causation, or in short, agency. Although we like to believe that our agency is a clear-cut experience, more and more research is showing that these feelings can be influenced by both internal and external factors. In his work Tom primarily focus on agency in its social context: the influence that other people have on our sense of agency.

Student,
Wesleyan University

Nick is a University Major in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory at Wesleyan University. His research areas include the social history of post-1968 French thought, the philosophy of science and mathematics, the materialisms, and speculative realism. He is currently writing an honors thesis on the role of Stephane Mallarme’s Un Coup de Des Jamais N’Abolira Le Hasard in the ontologies of Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, and Quentin Meillassoux.