Academic and Professional Career

Elia Soler Pastor works as a Research Assistant with ICREA Prof. Veronica Benet-Martinez, at Pompeu Fabra’s Department of Political and Social Sciences.

The project she is currently working on (Experiencing cultural diversity: the Socio-Cognitive Consequences of Interculturalism), directed by Prof. Benet-Martinez, aims at understanding the effects that experiencing cultural diversity have on individuals creative skills and on intergroup attitudes. The first study within this project explores the psychological consequences of multicultural identities, multicultural exposure and intercultural relations. The second study explores the role of both exposure to and interaction with stereotypically challenging socio-cultural information.

She also recently became involved in a project with Prof. Veronica Benet-Martinez and Dacher Keltner from the University of California Berkeley, which will look at cultural experiences of the emotion of “awe”.

Elia holds a B.A. in Psychology from Autonomous University of Barcelona (2009), and a M.A. in Immigration Management from the University Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona (2013). She studied a year abroad at the University of California, Santa Barbara (2006-2007).

During her professional experience as a social psychologist, she collaborated in a project financed by the Institute for Minority Rights of EURAC, at the PUC University in Chile. This project aimed to promote the local development of the Mapuche indigenous communities and to enhance the intercultural dialogue and cooperation with the public administration’s officials working with them on the field. She also did an internship at the United Nations Gender and Non-Discrimination Program of the International Labour Organization (Torino, Italy). On the other hand, she has worked and volunteered with people at social risk, unemployed people, working mothers and their children, and drug addictions inside the prison system.

 

Research Interests

  • Multicultural Identities and Cosmopolitanism

  • Intercultural and intergroup relations

  • Pro-social attitudes

  • Emotions and culture

 

Current Projects

  • Experiencing Cultural Diversity: the Socio-Cognitive Consequences of Interculturalism – RecerCaixa

  • Cultural experiences of the emotion of awe – UC Berkeley, UPF, Templeton Foundation.

 

Contact

Office: 24.410

Address: Mercè Rodoreda 24 Building (Campus Ciutadella)
                C/ Ramon Trias Fargas 25-27,
                08005 - Barcelona

Phone: (34) 93 542 1164
Email: [email protected]