Sandra Jovchelovitch

Sandra Jovchelovitch, from Porto Alegre, Brazil, is British social psychologist, currently senior lecturer and Director of the MSc program in Social and Cultural Psychology at the "Institute of Social Psychology" at the "London School of Economics", of which she serves as head since August 2007. Dr. Jovchelovitch is co-editor of the "Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology" and directs a book series on Contemporary Social Psychology for the Brazilian publishing house "Vozes". She also serves on the editorial boards of the "European Journal of Social Psychology" and "Psicologia e Sociedade". She has held appointments at the "Maison de Sciences de l'Homme", and under the auspices of CNPq (Brazilian National Council for Science and Technology), teaches regularly in Brazil and is on the faculty (Associate Professor) at the "Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul".

Biography

Sandra Jovchelovitch was trained as a clinical social psychologist at the "Pontifícia University of Rio Grande do Sul" in Brazil. She lectured at her alma mater until the 1990s, at which point she transitioned to the LSE to conduct research and pursue doctoral studies. She joined the Institute of Social Psychology at LSE in 1995.

Research and Intellectual Interests

Sandra Jovchelovitch has a solid publishing record dealing with the a wide range of topics which include: social representations, the social psychology of public life and community, knowledge dialogues, community development; primary health care in the community; and mental health. As most psychologists of her generation in Brazil, she is concerned with the uses of psychology in social settings and with how psychology can contribute to alleviate social inequalities.

Her recent book, "Knowledge in Context: Representations, Community and Culture" (2007), explores the relationship between knowledge and context through a novel analysis of processes of representation. In it, Dr. Jovchelovitch argues that representation, a social psychological construct relating self, other and object-world, is at the basis of all knowledge. Understanding its genesis and actualisation in individual and social life can explain, in part, what ties knowledge to persons, communities and cultures. The primary locus of her book is as follows: it is through representation that we can appreciate the diversity of knowledge, and it is representation that opens the epistemic function of knowing to emotional and social rationalities. Drawing on dialogues between psychology, sociology and anthropology, Dr. Jovchelovitch explores the dominant assumptions of western concepts of knowledge and the quest for a unitary reason free from the ‘impurities’ of person, community and culture. She recasts questions related to historical comparisons between the knowledge of adults and children, ‘civilised’ and ‘primitive’ peoples, scientists and lay communities and examines the ambivalence of classical theorists such as Piaget, Vygotsky, Freud, Durkheim and Lévy-Bruhl in addressing these issues. Against this background, Jovchelovitch situates and expands Moscovici’s theory of social representations, developing a framework to diagnose and understand knowledge systems, how they relate to different communities and what defines dialogical and non-dialogical encounters between knowledges in contemporary public spheres. Diversity in knowledge, she shows, is an asset of all human communities and dialogue between different forms of knowing constitutes the difficult but necessary task that can enlarge the frontiers of all knowledges. "(publisher's description)"

Publications

Single Authored Monographs

(2007) Knowledge in Context: Representations, community and culture, London: Routledge.

(2000) Representações Sociais e Espaço Público: A construção simbólica dos espaços públicos no Brasil, [Social Representations and Public Life: The symbolic construction of public spaces in Brazil] , Petrópolis: Vozes.

Joint Authored Research Monograph

(1998). The Health Beliefs of the Chinese Community in England. London: Health Education Authority. (with M-C. Gervais).

Edited Volume

(1994) Textos em Representações Sociais, [Texts on Social Representations] , Petrópolis: Vozes. (12th reprint 2005). (with P.A. Guareschi).

Refereed Articles

(2005) La fonction symbolique et la construction des representations: la dynamique communcationnelle ego/alter/object, [The symbolic function and the making of representation: Understanding the communicative dynamic between self-other-object] , Hermés 41: 51-57.

(2004) Psicologia Social : Saber, comunidade e cultura. Psicologia e Sociedade 16, 2: 20-31.

(2004) Contextualiser les focus groups: comprendre groupes et cultures dans la recherche sur le représentations. Bulletin de Psychologie 57, 3: 245-252.

(2004) Participation, health and the development of community resources in Southern Brazil. Journal of Health Psychology 9, 2: 311-322. (with P.A. Guareschi)

(2002) Re-thinking the Diversity of Knowledge: Cognitive polyphasia, belief and representation. Psychologie & Société 5: 121-138.

(2000) Health, Community and Development: Towards a social psychology of participation. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 10, 4: 255-270. (with C. Campbell)

(2000) Health, Community and Development. Special Issue. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology. 10: 4. (Guest Editor with C. Campbell).

(1999) Social representations of Health and Illness: The case of the Chinese community in England. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 9: 247-260.(with MC Gervais).

(1999) Theory and method of social representations. Asian Journal of Social Psychology 2: 59-89. (with W. Wagner, G. Duveen, R.M. Farr, F. Lorenzi-Cioldi, I. Marková, & D. Rose).

(1998) Health and Identity: The case of the Chinese community in England. Social Science Information 37, 4: 709-729. (with M-C. Gervais).

(1998) Emancipation and Domination in Social Representations of Public Life. Interamerican Journal of Psychology 32, 2: 169-189.

(1998) Representações Sociais: Para uma fenomenologia dos saberes sociais. Psicologia e Sociedade 10, 1: 54-68.

(1997) Peripheral Groups and the Transformation of Social Representations: Queries on Power and Recognition. Social Psychological Review 1, 1: 16-26.

(1996) In Defense of Representations. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 26, 2: 121-135.

(1996) Espaços the Mediação e Gênese das Representações Sociais, Psico 27, 1: 193-205.

(1996) Organisation psychology and psychologists in organisations: Focus on Organisational Transformation (with P. Humphreys and D. Berkeley) Journal of the Interamerican Society of Psychology 30, 1: 27-42.

(1995) Social Representations in and of the Public Sphere: Towards a Theoretical Articulation. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 25, 1: 81-102.

(1995) Questioning Consensus in Social Representations Theory. Papers on Social Representations 4, 2: 150-155.

(1994) Social Representations and Social Constructivism: A Shared Agenda? Comment on Maria Banch's Descontruyendo una Desconstruccion. Papers on Social Representations 3, 2: 225-228.

(1993) Social Representations: The Versatility of a Concept. Papers on Social Representations, 2: 3-10 (with A. Allansdottir. and A. Stathopoulou).

Book Chapters

(2006) Repenser la diversité de la connaissance: polyphasie cognitive, croyances et representations. In V. Hass (Ed.) Les Savois du quotidian. Transmission, appropriations, representations. Presses Universitaires de Rennes.

(2002) Social Representations and Narratives: Stories of Public Life in Brazil. In Lazlo, J. & Stainton Rogers, W. (Eds.) Narrative and Social Psychology. Budapeste: Budapeste University Press.

(2001) Social Representations, Public Life and Social Construction. In Deaux, K. & Philogene, G. (Eds) Representations of the Social. Blackwell: New York.

(2000) Narrative Interviewing. In M.W. Bauer and G.Gaskell ( Eds. ) Qualitative researching with text, image and sound: A practical handbook. pp. 57-74. London: Sage. (with M.W. Bauer)

(2000) Corruption flows in our blood: Mixture and impurity in representations of public life in Brazil. In M. Chaib and B. Orfali (Eds) Social Representations and Communicative Processes. pp. 139-155. Jönköping : Jönköping University Press.

(1998) Re(des)cobrindo o Outro: Para um entendimento da alteridade na teoria das representações sociais.(pp. 69-82) In A. Arruda (Ed) Representando a Alteridade. Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.

(1998) Intervening in the Public Sphere: Emancipation and Domination in Representational Fields. In A.-V. D. Riga (Ed.) Social Representations and Contemporary Social Problems. Athens: Ellinika Grammata.

(1994) Vivendo a Vida com os Outros: Espaço Público, Intersubjetividade e Representações Sociais. (Living with Others: Public Space, Intersubjectivity and Social Representations) In Guareschi, P.A. & Jovchelovitch, S. (eds) Textos em Representações Sociais. Petrópolis: Vozes, pp.63-85.

External links

* [http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/socialPsychology/whosWho/jovchelovitch.htm Jovchelovitch's page at LSE]