Country of residence

Hungary

Brief introduction

Education

Ph.D, social psychology, 2009, European Ph.D on social representation and communication

Academic profile

I am personally and scientifically interested in the subjective perspectives of intergroup relations, cultural diversities, intercultural applications, equal opportunities, minority rights, cooperative structures, developing dialogue and citizenship. In my research background I used mixed methodologies. I have expertise in projective methods to obtain data and narrative or content analysis of existing data. I use different software on quantifying content-based data (e.g. SPAD-t, Alceste, EVOC, Atlas-ti). My intercultural (Italo-Hungarian) and interdisciplinary (psychological, social-psychological, anthropological, sociological) background helps me to change perspective in analysis through different social contexts and historical backgrounds and to adopt complex and differentiated interpretative lens. I started my work in Rome in 2001 among the Gypsy communities, as the minority par excellence in all European countries. During my two years participative action research with one of the Gypsy communities, migrated in Italy before the Balkan Wars mainly from Sarajevo we set up a mixed association for everyday contact and work of Gypsy and majoritarian members together. We had started with 20 and arrived to 50 members. My scientific output of this experience concerns the dynamic, obstacles and facilitators of the construction of shared social identity, group affiliation and common knowledge, and how these changes influence old attitudes and schemas, intergroup behaviours; how old roles can be overwritten through new social roles.

I wrote my PhD thesis at the European Ph.D School on Social Representation and Communication with the title Gypsy representation – Gypsy identity under the direct supervision of Serge Moscivici, Juan Perez, Annamaria Silvana de Rosa. My different studies were dealing with database construction and macro-analytical analysis of movies about Gypsies; with comparative study on the majoritarian representation of Gypsies in Hungary and in Italy; and with the identity construction of Hungarian Gypsies. In all researches I used mixed methodologies, both qualitative (association networks, conceptual nets, projective tests and life narratives) and quantitative data (questionnaires). I also conceived a psycholinguistic model of evaluation in narratives and developed a new instrument for automatic analysis of texts.

My last research activities deal with the construction of collective victimhood based on historical representations, and the eventual impacts of perceived victimhood on working out prejudices concerning minorities. At the University of Pécs I lecture on qualitative methods and minority psychology for Master students. I also take part in European projects related to the education, integration and community construction concerning Hungarian Gypsies. I collaborate with the Faculty of Romology at the University of Pécs monitoring the educational carrier of university students of gypsy origin. I carry out teambuilding, communication and conflict resolution trainings for the students as well as sensitisation trainings for professors in tutoring role. I organized community building and conflict handling courses in the past three years in Southern Hungarian small towns and settlements where we have also examined the effects of reducing social benefits. In this study we have also used Hirschman’s categories of “exit” or “voice” to grasp the different strategies of such migrating social groups like Gypsies or majoritarian groups with different educational attainment. Summing up; I spent ten years in teaching at the university and contributed to the development of several local NGOs participating in integration equal opportunity projects in an intolerant social and legal context whilst Hungary has become a migration sending country. I tried to transfer scientific knowledge on the field and field experiences in teaching and research.

Publications

Bigazzi, S. & Csertő, I. (2015) To be or not to be. Identity alternatives and coping strategies of people categorized as Gypsies. In Journal of community & applied social pychology. (In press Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology) IF:0.88 Bigazzi, S. & Bokrétás, I. (2014) Helyzetbe zárt mentális folyamatok és a viszonyrendszerek ideológiai tükre: elméleti és társadalmi reflexiók egy kutatás nyomán [The ideological mirror of mental processes and relational systems inbedded in context: theoretical and societal reflections beyond a research] In Kriminológiai Közlemények 74. Magyar Kriminológiai Társaság. Budapest. 63-76 Bigazzi, S. (2013) Előítéletek [Prejudice] in A. Varga (ed.) Esélyegyenlőség a mai Magyarországon [Equal opportunities today in Hungary]  

Keywords

minority, representations, prejudice, threatened identity

Contact

bigazzisara@hotmail.com browse members list