Dr. Theofilos Gkinopoulos

Theofilos Gkinopoulos, BSc (Hons), PhD, FHEA, is Associate Professor of Social Psychology and Director of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Nicosia, UNIC Athens. He earned his PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom and a first-class honours degree in Psychology from Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Greece.

His research examines how social identities, collective memories, and political and societal conditions shape people’s intergroup beliefs, emotions, and perceptions about social groups. A central focus of his research is on the social psychology of conspiracy thinking in online and offline environments: its psychological and social roots, its links with uncertainty and historical trauma, and its consequences for trust, social cohesion, political engagement, and responses to public issues. Other areas of his work include historical victimhood, political communication and apology, social norms, inequality, global identification, and intergroup relations.

He uses experimental, survey, qualitative, and mixed-methods approaches. He has contributed to international research collaborations investigating social and moral psychology, climate action, public communication about science, and global social identification. These projects have examined attitudes and behaviour across many countries, helping researchers consider how psychological processes operate across different social and cultural settings.

His work has appeared in journals including Current Opinion in Psychology, Political Psychology, European Journal of Social Psychology, Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Climate Change, Science Advances, Communications Psychology, and the British Journal of Social Psychology. He has also contributed to the development of conceptual models about the psychology of conspiracy thinking and its cognitive and emotional underpinnings, scholarly chapters and special issues, and has signed contracts for books on intergroup conflict and social psychology and politics. His research has received support from organizations including the European Association of Social Psychology, Jagiellonian University, and the University of Warsaw.

Before joining the University of Nicosia, Gkinopoulos held academic and research positions in Poland, the United Kingdom and Greece. He teaches social psychology, research methods and statistics, qualitative research, and mixed-methods design to undergraduate and postgraduate students. He has also taught at international summer schools and delivered invited talks at universities and research events in Europe and the United States.

Gkinopoulos is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a member of the European Association of Social Psychology, the International Society of Political Psychology, and the International Association of Cross-Cultural Psychology.