Who we are

 

We are an international group of early career researchers (ECRs), working in the social and life sciences, who passionately believe in making academia a better place for underrepresented people. We ourselves are of diverse cultural, national, linguistic, gender, and neural ability as well as social backgrounds.

The Feminist WonderLab Collective was founded after a hackathon at a meeting of the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) 2022 on “Feminist ways of doing science”, co-organized by Kohinoor Darda, Helena Hartmann and Sarah Sauvé. The Collective meets online at least once a month to work on projects related to feminist perspectives on science, teaching, and academia. To check out our past and current projects, please visit Projects and resources page.

We currently have eight members and always welcome more like-minded scholars (in or outside of academia), from any fields and backgrounds. If you’d like to join, please get in touch with any of our current members. Our current members are:

 

Dr. Sarah Sauvé (she/her)
Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Lincoln
ssauve [at] lincoln [dot] ac [dot] uk

I call myself a feminist music scientist because I’m interested in how the brain processes music and how we go about doing science, with goals of equity and justice. Outside of the academy, I sing in the Lincoln Choral Society, am involved in activist organizations (Extinction Rebellion, Stand up to racism), am learning to sew clothes and run to dissolve the stresses of life.

 

 

Dr. Helena Hartmann (she/her)
Psychologist, neuroscientist and science communicator at the University Hospital Essen in Germany
helena [dot] hartmann [at] uk-essen [dot] de

I am interested in factors that influence how we perceive pain in ourselves and in other people. I also conduct research on how our positive and negative expectations affect the success of medical treatments and what happens in the brain during these processes. My approach to science strongly aligns with open scholarship principles. Next to my work as a researcher, I enthusiastically engage in and teach science communication. My non-academic passions are writing short stories for my project Science & Fiction, yoga, sorting books by color, and bread baking. I’m also Feminist Wonder Lab’s Code of conduct community leader.

 

 

Dr. Vasiliki Meletaki (she/her)
Postdoctoral Researcher at the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics at the University of Pennsylvania
vasiliki [dot] meletaki [at] pennmedicine [dot] upenn [dot] edu
You can follow Vasiliki on X and LinkedIn

I am interested in how art and design can be used to promote wellness and facilitate emotion regulation in the general and clinical population. My research interests include among others the influence of expertise and psychophysiological characteristics in aesthetic and emotional experiences. Outside of the lab, I love contemporary dance, traveling, baking, gardening, playing with my dog, or buying more books and plants. I’m also Feminist Wonder Lab’s mailing list contact person.

 

 

Dr. Nadia Saraí Corral Frías (she/they/ella)
Professor at Universidad de Sonora (Northwest Mexico)
You can follow Nadia on X, LinkedIn, and Bluesky

I am interested in the biopsychosocial risk and protective factors of stress-related psychopathology. I am a proponent of increasing diversity in psychological and brain sciences and pride myself in my outreach activities. Outside the lab I love anything food related (from cooking to eating), watching and playing sports (especially football) and music (concerts and dancing).

 

 

Dr. Kohinoor Darda (she/her)
Founder-Director, ARISA Foundation, Pune, IN

I am interested in the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie our interactions in the social world and our engagement with art. As an Indian classical dancer, I like to integrate my background in the performing arts and my interest in neuroscience in both my research and choreographic endeavours. Outside of the lab, I enjoy social interactions with fictional characters in novels, underwater aesthetic experiences when scuba diving, and finding the next triathlon I can sign up to!

 

 

Dr. Flavio Azevedo
Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at the University of Utrecht
You can follow Flavio on X, LinkedIn, Mastodon, and Bluesky

Flavio Azevedo is a pioneer in developing tools and practices in Open Science and an advocate for a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive Open Science movement. Flavio is a recognized international leader in Open Science and has received prestigious awards for Open Science, including the UKRN Dorothy Bishop Prize, Hidden-REF, JISC Community Champion, and was a finalist at the Einstein Foundation Early-career Research Award on research quality. In 2018, Flavio co-founded FORRT —an interdisciplinary, international community of 1000+ scholars at all career stages. FORRT integrates Open Science principles into higher education to advance research transparency, reproducibility, rigor, and ethics through pedagogical reform and metascientific research.

 

 

Dr. Zlatomira G. Ilchovska (she/her/тя/ella)
Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham
z [dot] g [dot] ilchovska [dot] [at] bham [dot] ac [dot] uk
You can find me on X or LinkedIn.

I investigate the functional, structural and neurochemical markers of frontotemporal dementia. I’m a psychologist and neuroscientist, and my research interests are bi- and multilingualism, cognition and aging, both healthy and in the case of dementia. My passion for Open Scholarship stems from my own educational struggles to access knowledge and I’d like to provide a better start for my students. In my free time I like learning languages, doing aerial arts and singing flamenco (or anything else) to my many plants.

 

Dr. Gabriela Hofer (she/her)
Postdoctoral researcher at University of Graz, Austria
gabriela [dot] hofer [at] uni-graz [dot] at
You can find me on X or Bluesky.

I’m a personality psychologist and postdoctoral researcher at University of Graz, Austria. I am interested in what people think about their own abilities and the abilities of others. Recently, I have been asking myself whether these beliefs about abilities are related to gender (e.g., Do women underestimate themselves? And are they underestimated by other people as well?). My other research interests include romantic relationships and sexuality. I am passionate about open research practices and initiatives that try to improve the working conditions of early-career researchers. When I am not in the office, I love being in nature, traveling, and going to concerts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This website was created by Zlati Ilchovska in R and GitHub following the tutorial by Prof. Lisa DeBruine and this amazing workshop by Ms. Freya Watkins.