Affiliation: University of Edinburgh
I am currently a PhD researcher in the psychology department at the University of Edinburgh. I graduated from the Open University with a first class honours degree in psychology in 2016. My research focuses on high demand religious groups which can be defined as those which control the social world and actions of the individual through a strictly imposed framework of rules. How the process of leaving such a group works from a social identity perspective has been an area neglected in social psychology to date. There is a growing body of data available online providing insights into the world of high demand groups which this research will utilise. The overarching aim of my research is to explore exit and identity changes by examining the various discourse constructions at play in the descriptions of those who are or have been involved with these groups. The nature of the data under examination, which contains a level of social interaction, makes it suitable for analysis using discursive psychology. CA and discursive analysis provide a rigorous, qualitative means to psychologically examine this rarely explored process through the highlighting of category entitlements and ascriptions, moral accountability through the process and epistemic access issues in interaction.
Email: Paula.greenlees@ed.ac.uk