Sonja Belkin

Biography

• I'm a final year student at LSE, where I'm studying the BSc in Psychological and Behavioural Science (though my degree has made me a lot more cautious about the latter...). Outside of my degree, I've been enthusiastic about increasing the community around behavioural science and psychology research, through efforts like co-running the UK's first inter-university Behavioural Science Careers Fair (alongside UCL, Warwick, and Cambridge) and co-founding LSE's student psychology journal, Irrationale. My research interests are broadly within social and cognitive psychology - in particular, I'm passionate about researching polarisation, radicalisation, and misinformation, especially via social networks. I'm also keen on some more EA-related stuff like how interactions with AI can affect trust and morals and how to use behavioural science to increase willingness to donate to effective charities. Methodology-wise, I've been increasingly interested in social network analysis and computational methods like agent-based modelling. In October, I'll be starting an MPhil/PhD, which will focus on using Bayesian belief networks to better model and understand political polarisation. 

  I've been following Seeds of Science since early 2022- having found out about the endeavour via a post on the Very Bad Wizards subreddit (a podcast which was partly responsible for me getting into academic psychology).  I've really enjoyed all the articles I've been able to read as a result of participating as a Gardener and really appreciate the community-based, unpaywalled(!) aspects of it. I'm excited to continue being part of the community in the Research Fellow role, as I (hopefully) gain more research skills! 

  You can find me on Twitter/X @SonjaBelkin or email me at sonjabelkin@gmail.com. 

Research Areas

• Social psychology

• Cognitive psychology

• Political polarisation