On March 10-12, 2011, over 1,800 psychologists and students from as far as Moscow gathered at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge for the 82nd annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association. Once again, for the ninth year since 2003, this included the semi-annual program and meeting of the 25-person board of directors of the APA Division 52, International Psychology (D52). Thanks to EPA, D52 had its board meeting from noon till 5 pm on March 10, then a two-day program of 10 symposia and poster sessions on March 11-12, presenting work by D52 members and others.  The 30 seats in the Hyatt Cambridge room were often filled by a steady stream of students and professionals hearing about a variety of global topics: publishing opportunities in international psychology, the United Nations, international collaborations on TAT scoring, internationalizing the teaching of psychology, intervening after natural and human-made disasters.

Some images of these sessions appear at www.picasaweb.com/takoosh  This program had some unusual features.

During the two-day conference, conferees closely followed media news of a deadly 8.9 earthquake in Japan, while teams of experts at EPA discussed their work after past disasters in Haiti, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Armenia, Lebanon, Sierra Leone and elsewhere.

Officers of Psi Chi, the international honor society for psychology, joined D52 for a joint session on “Psi Chi: Moving from a national to an international society in psychology.”

Under Russian professor Alexander Voronov, a team of seven faculty and students from Moscow visited EPA, and offered a symposium on “Russian psychology today: Current trends.” This included the debut of a nine-minute DVD, “Psi Chi: Student excellence,” translated into the Russian language by Dr. Alexey Sozinov of the Academy of Sciences of Russia.

On behalf of D52, President John Hogan thanked the EPA Board of Directors for hosting such a full program on international psychology, and presented his Presidential Citation to EPA Executive Officer Frederick Bonato and Program Chair Diane Finley for their efforts to make EPA a model among the seven U.S. regional psychology associations.

Thanks to the efforts of D52 secretary Ayse Çiftçi, about 30 members shared a wonderful international supper at the exotic Elephant Walk in Cambridge

To give the EPA presentations a wider audience, Editor Grant Rich invites session chairs or presenters to consider adapting their presentation for possible publication this year in the APA International Psychology Bulletin.  Contact Dr. Rich at optimalex@aol.com

 

PHOTO CAPTION: Members and guests of the D52 board in CambridgeMA (photo by Michael Meir)

Jennifer De Mucci Chairing a panel on  the Impact of Natural Disasters at EPA

Karin Soweid is presenting on the reseacrch on the Impact of Long-term Trauma of War in  Lebanon

Second Panel on the impact of Human-Made disasters: from left Jennifer De  Mucci, Karin Soweid, Dr Kalayjian, Drs Meiyer