Professor Ivana Markova

Emeritus Professor

Psychology University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA

Professor Ivana Markova

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About me

I graduated from Charles University in Prague in philosophy and subsequently I obtained PhDr in psychology. I came to the Department of Cambridge as a post-doctoral visitor in 1967, and in 1970 I was appointed at the University of Stirling as a lecturer in social psychology. I am Emeritus Professor at the University of Stirling, Visiting Professor in the Department of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political science (since 2007) and a Research Associate in the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences at the London School of Economic and Political Sciences (since 2011). I am a Fellow of the British Academy, of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the British Psychological Society. In 2012, together with Professor Martin Bauer of the London School of Exonomics and Political Science I initiated a study group on common sense in social sciences. This interdisciplinary and international project focuses on the study of epistemology of common sense in relation to science.

Over the years I carried out a) empirical research into the social and psychological problems of people with haemophilia, learning difficulties and cerebral palsy focusing above all on language and communication and on interdependence between the Selves and Others. Research in haemophilia, in addition, was concerned with knowledge and representations of this genetic disorder by people with haemophilia and their families, with the risk of HIV/AIDS and with genetic counselling. The studies on social representations of democracy, trust and responsibility in post-Communist Europe involved comparative research carried out in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, France and the UK. Much of this research was based on the use of focus groups and on interviews. b) theoretical research into epistemology of social psychology was concerned with critiques of of epistemologies based on static and mechanistic presuppositions of language and knowing, and with the development of the dialogical alternative. My current research continues the development of the dialogicality as epistemology of common sense and professional practices. This theoretical work is underlied by presuppositions of the ethical interdependence between the Self and Other(s), with imagination, trust and responsibility, and with meanings of these concepts in dialogical professional practices.