Professor Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington, LSE, Professor Sheehy-Skeffington holds a BA in Psychology and Philosophy from Trinity College Dublin, and an MA and PhD in Psychology at Harvard University.

Before that, she obtained an MSc in Social Psychology at LSE, where she is currently an Assistant Professor. She is also a Visiting Researcher at the University of Oslo and Aarhus University. By studying the mechanisms underpinning the human sensitivity to power, status and group membership, her aim is to understand how these mechanisms operate in institutional and wider societal settings, such as poverty, inequality and conflict.

Do poor people make choices that lower their willingness to take risks in favour of higher future incomes, or are these choices what lead to poverty in the first place?

The UCL Psychology Society is delighted to welcome Professor Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington to explain the influence of poverty on cognitive processes, behavioural patterns, and the challenges that results from poverty itself. Further, she will be explaining why it is important that policy-makers bear this in mind if they aim to reduce poverty.