Janko Božič finished undergraduate study in Ljubljana (1988) with thesis “Activities during honeybee dance – analysis of the follower’s behavior”. After master thesis (1992)  “Social interactions of the bees in the hive” obtained at Ljubljana University, he continued with Ph. D. study at Louisiana State University, Zoology department, Baton Rouge, USA, and finished in 1996 with the thesis: “The relationship of hemolymph sugars, juvenile hormone and biogenic amines to the three behavioral states of mature honeybees”.

After Ph.D. he returned to Ljubljana, first worked as teaching assistant in the field of Animal behavior.  Until recently he was Associate Professor for the field of Ethology (Animal behavior) at University of Ljubljana, Biotechnical Faculty, Department of biology. Currently is teaching practical labs in animal behavior and beekeeping fields. His research is focused on bee behavior in different aspects. He is the leader of the Center for Beekeeping at Biotechnical faculty. He is also involved also in unformal education of the beekeepers, leading examining committee for beekeeping masters. 

He has also contributed in the latest and current research projects and programs at Biotechnical faculty related to honeybee physiology, toxicology and genetics with honeybees management, preparation of field experiments, sampling and interpretation of the results. He was involved in applied research in beekeeping financed by Slovene government. He is leading applied research project for chestnut honey, he organized research group to investigate further medical potentials for use of chestnut honey. He is currently leading research and development for the part of the Interreg IT-SI projects Bee-Diversity at the Biotechnical faculty, one of the 5 project’s partners. Current international cooperation is focused on beekeepers and researchers from USA and Malaysia. 

E-mental health, or the use of technology in mental healthcare, has been the focus of research for over two decades. Over that period, the evidence-base for the potential of technology to improve clinical practice has grown steadily. This sharply contrasts with the actual use of e-mental health by psychologists, which has remained limited. The pandemic has however clearly demonstrated that technology can sometimes serve as an indispensable solution to allow for the delivery and continuation of high-quality mental healthcare. As online consultations were initially rapidly implemented all around the world to meet urgent demands, their pragmatic use will probably remain in the long-term as well. 

There is, nevertheless, more to technology than Zoom sessions. The goal of this talk is therefore to provide an overview of the broad variety of technologies, their potential applications, and how they could be used to help meet the ever increasing demand for accessible mental healthcare for all. Special attention will also be paid to the role which psychologists and psychological theory can play in the conceptualisation, development and testing of (new) technologies for mental health. This will be followed by a hypothetical case, which will make the integrated use of these technologies in clinical practice more tangible. Throughout the talk, current limitations will be highlighted and we will conclude with discussing challenges for future research.

Increasingly, psychology is gaining recognition as a hub science, and clinical supervision for psychologists is being recognized as a major contributor to the pedagogy and development of science.  This is because clinical supervision provides a strategic and foundational mechanism in hub sciences in future generations of practitioners and leaders.  To date, however, clinical supervision has not been elevated to the level of importance it warrants as a signature pedagogy It has not sufficiently achieved the educational status necessary to ensure essential transmission of knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes to future generations.  There are several future steps to achieve that goal on a global basis: (1) increase the recognition of the necessity of clinical supervision and training;  (2) support the  implementation of intentional and systematic practices as a model for training; and (3) assure that carefully defined “competence” is placed in the forefront of these aspirations, rather than simply “experience or education.”.  To ensure this recognition, a sequence of requisite supervision training needs to be provided normatively in the developmental progression of graduate education. The objective will be to ensure trainers and trainees alike of the value of clinical supervision and supervision relationships. the ever-growing body of evidence and research support, inclusive of empirical methodology, aspiring to the highest ethical adherence, all supporting interdisciplinary and international collaboration.  The sequence would include theoretical, research, and experiential components, with evaluative modules to assess supervisee competence. International sharing of experience, evidence, and analysis will provide the essential building blocks to achieve that objective. 

Extended CV of Carol Falender, PhD.

Null hypothesis significance testing has been an important mode of inference in psychological research. However, the attention for null and informative hypothesis Bayesian testing (see, for tutorials, Hoijtink et al., 2019, and Van Lissa et al., 2021)  is rapidly increasing. Where the traditional null hypothesis states that “nothing is going on”, e.g., H0: mu1 = mu2 = m3, an informative hypothesis represent an expectation of a researcher, e.g., Hi: mu1 > mu2 > m3, where the mu’s denote the population means in each of three groups. Bayesian testing employs the Bayes factor which quantifies the support in the data for two competing hypotheses. If, for example, BF0i = 10, the support for H0 is 10 times larger than the support for Hi. 

This presentation will introduce Bayesian hypothesis evaluation using concepts and examples (and not equations and formulas). Subsequently, informative hypotheses, the Bayes factor, posterior model probabilities (the Bayesian counterpart of Type I and Type II errors), and Bayesian updating (in the Bayesian realm one can repeatedly collect additional data and re-evaluate the hypotheses under investigation) will be introduced. One example uses JASP (https://jasp-stats.org/) the other the R package (https://www.r-project.org/).

Individuals, organizations, and societies are increasingly migrating to the digital environment. A growing proportion of our activities―such as socializing, work, entertainment, shopping, and even dating―are now mediated by digital devices and services. Such digitally mediated activities can be easily recorded, producing large amounts of digital footprints of our behavior. The resulting data is fed to ever-more powerful algorithms, offering an unprecedented opportunity to understand, predict, and influence our behavior. This is changing the lives and experiences of individuals; reshaping societies; and leading to the emergence of new products, industries, and business models. Much of this change is for the better, but there are also challenges ranging from the loss of privacy to AI-fueled mass propaganda. It's on us to ensure that we are building the Global Village and not the world of Mad Max.

Extended CV of Michal Kosinski, PhD and his website.

Todd Lubart is professor of psychology at the University of Paris (France). He has directed  a research lab, several large-scale projects on creativity, and is currently leading ISSCI, a non-profit organization to foster international research intitiatives on creativity.  Since 30 years, he has authored/coauthored  200+ articles, books and book chapters  on creativity, as well as internationally used psychometric tools to assess creative potential. 

Extended CV of Prof Todd Lubart.

Dr. Maria Ojala is Associate Professor (docent) in psychology at Örebro University, Sweden. She is research director (shared responsibility) for Center for Environmental and Sustainability Social Science (CESSS). Maria’s main research interest concerns how young people think, feel, act, learn, cope, and communicate about global environmental problem, with a specific focus on climate change. She has performed research with young people about these topics for over 15 years. She has published both quantitative and qualitative empirical studies in journals like Journal of Environmental Psychology, Environment & Behavior, Environmental Education Research, and Journal of Youth Studies. Maria has also written theoretical articles about hope and the importance of critical emotional awareness in climate change education. In 2021 she was the lead author in an invited review article about climate-change worry, eco-anxiety, and ecological grief published in Annual Review of Environment and Resources.

Website of Maria Ojala, PhD.

Reinhard Pekrun is Professor of Psychology at the University of Essex, United Kingdom, and Professorial Fellow at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University, Sydney. His research areas include achievement emotion and motivation, personality development, and psychological assessment and evaluation. He pioneered research on emotions in achievement settings and originated the Control-Value Theory of Achievement Emotions. Pekrun is a highly cited researcher who has published more than 350 books, articles, and chapters, including numerous papers in leading journals such as Psychological Science, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Journal of Educational Psychology, Child Development, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, and Emotion. He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the American Educational Research Association, and the International Academy of Education. Pekrun served as President of the Stress and Anxiety Research Society and as Vice-President for Research at the University of Munich. In 2015, he received the John G. Diefenbaker Award from the Canada Council which acknowledges outstanding research accomplishments across fields in the humanities and social sciences. He is also the recipient of the Sylvia Scribner Award 2017 (American Educational Research Association), the EARLI Oeuvre Award 2017 (European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction), and the Lifetime Achievement Award 2018 of the German Psychological Society.

Diagnosable mental disorders affect around 13% of young people worldwide. Mental disorders produce the largest burden of disease during childhood and adolescence and importantly, they predict the continuation and onset of mental disorders along the life course. Yet despite this serious impact, the vast majority of young people suffering mental disorders do not receive empirically validated help. Increasing access to effective interventions for mental disorders during the child and adolescent period is a critical step for countries to reduce the personal, social, and economic burden of poor mental health. 

Schools provide widespread and equitable access to young people in many countries, making this a practical setting within which to provide help to those suffering mental disorders. Poor recognition of mental disorders from parents, teachers, and young people themselves creates a serious barrier. Universal mental health screening is one method by which young people in distress can be identified within a school setting, following which they can receive direction towards the most appropriate care. 

The current talk will describe a study that is being conducted across the state of New South Wales in Australia to trial a system of school-based mental health screening and referral. The first step has been to develop a screening instrument that is brief, acceptable, and easily administered. Participants include around 10,000 young people across grades 4 to 11, along with teachers, school principals, and parents. In this talk, I will describe the development of the instrument and its psychometric properties as well as its feasibility and acceptability. I will describe our process of universal mental health screening as well as difficulties and barriers that we encountered and consider potential future directions.

In this talk I shall use recent developments in the social psychology of leadership in order to analyse and understand Vladimir Putin's toxic appeal. First of all, I shall introduce the idea of 'identity leadership' which views leader influence as dependent on a process of social identity management. Second, I shall address what makes leadership toxic both in terms of intra-group relations (authoritarianism) and inter-group relations (outgroup hate). In particular, I shall pointed to a common form of 'enemyship' rhetoric which is used to invoke these toxic features an which involves (a) a sense of ingroup exceptionalism; (b) a sense of decline from ones rightful pre-eminence; (c) a belief that this decline has been produced by a combination of external enemies abetted by internal traitors; (d) a claim that unity under the leader can restore group pre-eminence. In the third and final part of the talk I shall examine the public rhetoric of Putin (and others) to see the extent to which he exemplifies this pattern.

Resilience is a construct recognized in many sciences. In the social sciences, resilience is applied to individuals, groups, organizations, and societies. In this context, the focus is not only on restoring the old state. Rather, it is about internal change and/or external shaping of conditions that enable positive coping with challenges and crises as a basis for positive further development. Resilience thus becomes a multi-systemic process in which the interplay of risk and protective factors, of weaknesses and strengths of the system, as well as difficulties and supportive potentials of its environment are balanced in such a way that development opportunities open.

To do justice to psychology as a profession, we can assume that science and practice and their fields can be understood as semi-autonomous systems. They contribute to the positive adaptation of the overall system to changing internal and external conditions. Specific expertise defined professional ethics, commitment to the common good, responsibility and self-control, specific privileges, prestige as characteristics of a profession help to distinguish and profile different professions among one another. 

The period of the pandemic has led to a variety of adjustments in professional science, professional practice, and professional policy. These changes can be understood as systemic change in the sense of resilience. With them come opportunities for positive advancement of the discipline.  

Psychology has mastered this challenge excellently in many countries. Now it is important to secure these successes and to use the new status as a multi-functional "hub science and profession" for the future. However, it is also important to develop an identity from the narrative of a competent and helpful science and profession that strengthens the unity of psychology in all its diversity. With growing self-confidence and a positive identity, psychology can then also face the challenges reflected in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Extended CV of Prof Christoph Steinebach.

More than two decades ago, Arnett proposed emerging adulthood to represent a new conceptualization of the developmental period from the late teens to the late twenties. The new period, however, refers to (post)industrialized societies in which the postponement of taking on adult roles and responsibilities has created the conditions for the manifestation of characteristics that differ from those of adolescents and adults. Not only do young people have different developmental experiences than in the past, but the path to adulthood is longer and the time required to accomplish important developmental tasks of adolescence (e.g., individuation in the parent-child relationship) is prolonged. This presentation will focus on emerging adults' individuation in relation to their parents – an intrapsychic process of gaining individuality and autonomy while maintaining relatedness to parents. Given the changes in developmental context and improvement in psychological resources from adolescence to emerging adulthood, there are differences in aspects of individuation between the two periods. Nevertheless, the instruments used to assess individuation in adolescence have been more or less adopted for emerging adulthood. The presentation will therefore emphasize an important contribution of Slovenian authors in this field, namely the construction of a targeted measure (the Test of Individuation for Emerging Adults; ITEA) and its short form, both of which capture specific aspects of individuation in emerging adulthood and have been validated in several countries. A comprehensive review of ITEA based and related research that follows both dimensional and person-centered approaches will address several questions. For example, do the characteristics of individuation in relation to mother and father overlap? Are there differences between same-sex and opposite-sex parent-child dyads? To what extent do emerging adults' individuation experiences match their parents' perceptions? What role do parental characteristics, sociocultural context, and emerging adult personality play in individuation? How does individuation affect important developmental outcomes (e.g., attainment of criteria for adulthood, subjective well-being)? Do parents also individuate in relation to their children and does this matter? By discussing the findings and their implications, the presentation will also highlight new challenges for research and practice.

Maja Zupančič is a full professor of Developmental Psychology at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, and the chair of Developmental Psychology Division. She was also a visiting professor at the Centro Studi Universitari Internazionali in Lugano, the University of Rijeka and the University of Vienna. She has been the leader of the national research program Applied Developmental Psychology since 2004, and has represented the research field in Psychology over the past decade at the Slovenian Research Agency. She has collaborated in several international research projects over the past decades, more recently with colleagues at the University of Vienna (on psychosocial and financial domains of development in emerging adulthood), University of Wroclaw (e.g., large-scale cross-cultural studies on aspects of intimate relationships from emerging adulthood through adulthood), and the Catholic University of Milan as a member of the research team COVIN (investigating factors affecting developmental outcomes of emerging adults during the pandemic) and the cross-national project on emerging adults' financial well-being. She (co)authored and (co)edited several developmental handbooks, among them the first Slovenian trilogy on life-span development. Internationally, she published original papers (e.g., in Child Indicators Research, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, European Journal of Personality, Journal of Personality Assessment, Journal of Adolescence, Journal of Early Adolescence, Journal of Youth Studies, Emerging Adulthood) and received the Excellent in Science award (for research co/authorship in the field of social science) three times by the Slovenian Research Agency. Professionally, she collaborates with the Centre for Psycho-diagnostic Assessment Tools in adaptations/standardizations of measurement instruments and reviews of assessment manuals. Her previous work mainly included studies of children’s play, as well as personality and psychosocial development over childhood and adolescence, but her current research interests focus on psychosocial development and adjustment in emerging adulthood, particularly personality development, individuation, aspects of subjective well-being, and models of financial functioning in emerging adulthood.