Have a question? Interested in working with us? Got an idea for a research partnership? Want us to speak at your event or to your team? Drop us a line and start a dialogue.
Below you will also find information for students wishing to join the lab.
Below you will also find information for students wishing to join the lab.
Winnifred Louis
MC-407
School of Psychology
McElwain Building
The University of Queensland
St Lucia, QLD 4072
Australia
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +61 7 3346 9515
You can contact all other researchers in the Social Change Lab through contact details on their individual researcher pages. Thanks!
MC-407
School of Psychology
McElwain Building
The University of Queensland
St Lucia, QLD 4072
Australia
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +61 7 3346 9515
You can contact all other researchers in the Social Change Lab through contact details on their individual researcher pages. Thanks!
Supervision for PhD and Honours: information from Winnifred for students wishing to join the Social Change Lab
For PhD students, my supervision style is to have regular meetings, early deadlines, and clear guidance. I like my students to aim to write more, aim at higher level journals, collect more data, go to more conferences, attend more international and national summer schools, learn more about teaching well, take ethics seriously, attend lab group regularly, play a leadership role in their postgrad cohort, and in general attempt to be high achievers. I provide lots of support and structure, and my focus is on helping students to achieve jobs as well as publications & awards. I am willing to supervise across a wide range of topics. My own research expertise is in the areas of social influence, peace psychology and political decision-making, health decision-making, and prejudice/intergroup conflict.
In particular, I value two kinds of candidates:
Although it isn’t a major feature of the lab’s research now, I would also like to signal a commitment to heritage language retention research (e.g., for immigrants or Indigenous Australians).
Please check carefully whether applications for international PhD students make sense for you. International applicants should indicate in their cover email that they have reviewed the information online regarding the language and visa requirements and high fees for international PhD students. Please note that even when international applications for scholarships are open, they are difficult to obtain and not always very generous, so it’s a significant commitment to take on!
For Australian domestic students, first class honours is usually required to get a scholarship in psychology, though it's sometimes possible to get a scholarship with a high IIA. I am open to self-funded candidates, but be sure to explain in your intro email your awareness of the costs / fees and the rationale for pursuing research higher degree training, especially if you are going to take a crack at a PhD without a scholarship.
In your email, I would ask you to send in a copy of your academic transcript, your updated CV, as well as any English-language publications that you might have written, a proposal for your research, and ideally 1 or 2 reference letters to support your application.
For potential honours students, my supervision style is to provide plenty of structure, early deadlines, and clear guidance so that motivated students can put themselves in a position to achieve excellent results.
I prefer to work with students who work hard, and I welcome curiosity-driven, research-oriented or social-justice-oriented students most. For 2026, I am asking students to work with me on a grant project on political decision-making and intergroup conflict.
For PhD students, my supervision style is to have regular meetings, early deadlines, and clear guidance. I like my students to aim to write more, aim at higher level journals, collect more data, go to more conferences, attend more international and national summer schools, learn more about teaching well, take ethics seriously, attend lab group regularly, play a leadership role in their postgrad cohort, and in general attempt to be high achievers. I provide lots of support and structure, and my focus is on helping students to achieve jobs as well as publications & awards. I am willing to supervise across a wide range of topics. My own research expertise is in the areas of social influence, peace psychology and political decision-making, health decision-making, and prejudice/intergroup conflict.
In particular, I value two kinds of candidates:
- Curious: loves learning; loves ideas; wants to be an academic because of the autonomy & freedom to pursue groovy research;
- Passionate: passionate about social justice; smart and self-motivated; wants to pursue research to change to the world (maybe academia, maybe aiming for government or NGOs).
Although it isn’t a major feature of the lab’s research now, I would also like to signal a commitment to heritage language retention research (e.g., for immigrants or Indigenous Australians).
Please check carefully whether applications for international PhD students make sense for you. International applicants should indicate in their cover email that they have reviewed the information online regarding the language and visa requirements and high fees for international PhD students. Please note that even when international applications for scholarships are open, they are difficult to obtain and not always very generous, so it’s a significant commitment to take on!
For Australian domestic students, first class honours is usually required to get a scholarship in psychology, though it's sometimes possible to get a scholarship with a high IIA. I am open to self-funded candidates, but be sure to explain in your intro email your awareness of the costs / fees and the rationale for pursuing research higher degree training, especially if you are going to take a crack at a PhD without a scholarship.
In your email, I would ask you to send in a copy of your academic transcript, your updated CV, as well as any English-language publications that you might have written, a proposal for your research, and ideally 1 or 2 reference letters to support your application.
For potential honours students, my supervision style is to provide plenty of structure, early deadlines, and clear guidance so that motivated students can put themselves in a position to achieve excellent results.
I prefer to work with students who work hard, and I welcome curiosity-driven, research-oriented or social-justice-oriented students most. For 2026, I am asking students to work with me on a grant project on political decision-making and intergroup conflict.
Volunteering with the Social Change Lab
We do have opportunities for undergraduate students and others to undertake volunteer activity in the lab in 2026: please email Winnifred if interested. Describe your skills, preferred activities, and motivation in half to 1 page.
We seek students with skills in video-editing for translation activities; students with skills in research and writing for various projects including policy and stake-holder mapping and literature summary projects; and students with office/admin experience to support a complex array of new projects and team-members. We also have some traditional volunteer spaces: Whether through attending lab meetings, helping honours or PhD students with data collection or coding, or doing literature reviews, you can acquire experience that will help you prepare for honours or contemplate a research career.
If you have great grades (including in statistics), you can apply to be mentored to help write up old data sets over the summer or winter breaks. This would be heaps more work and commitment than other volunteering positions, but could see you become a co-author on the paper if it eventually gets published.
We do have opportunities for undergraduate students and others to undertake volunteer activity in the lab in 2026: please email Winnifred if interested. Describe your skills, preferred activities, and motivation in half to 1 page.
We seek students with skills in video-editing for translation activities; students with skills in research and writing for various projects including policy and stake-holder mapping and literature summary projects; and students with office/admin experience to support a complex array of new projects and team-members. We also have some traditional volunteer spaces: Whether through attending lab meetings, helping honours or PhD students with data collection or coding, or doing literature reviews, you can acquire experience that will help you prepare for honours or contemplate a research career.
If you have great grades (including in statistics), you can apply to be mentored to help write up old data sets over the summer or winter breaks. This would be heaps more work and commitment than other volunteering positions, but could see you become a co-author on the paper if it eventually gets published.
SAFE Labs
Our lab is starting to engage with the SAFE labs initiative on Starting Aware Fair and Equitable labs. There's a lot to this plan but the essence is to try to make explicit some of the unwritten norms and information that allows success in academia, plus making public commitments to avoid various dodgy practices. This will eventually be quite a big document (eventually a lab handbook) but at the moment we have written the info below.
How to ask for a reference letter
Reference letters are important for job applications and for some summer school and travel grant applications. Lab members will receive a reference letter from Winnifred, unless I feel that it isn’t possible to write a positive letter (this will be openly communicated).
The first letter for a new lab member requires a lot of time to write. Please give me at least two weeks’ notice.
Your email should also include the following information: (a) type of position or event; (b) copy of your application (e.g., your statement of meeting the selection criteria / your statement of suitability and intent to apply for the role) and CV; (c) deadline for reference letter, format requirements if known , and how to submit.
Please also send a reminder 3 days before the deadline if you have not heard from me.
In some cases the process of giving a reference involves your nominating me and then the organisation sending a link or a form. You will need to notify me in advance that that’s coming. If I have not been advised that I am being nominated I may not open the email or complete the form. Also, if I don't remember the student, and I don't know how we worked together, I will not provide the reference.
In some cases (e.g., for many post-doctoral positions), reference letters are only requested if the candidate is short-listed. In this case, typically, you would first ask me in advance if it’s ok to nominate me as a referee. Then, you might email me to let me know that you have applied. Finally, if you are short-listed, you would send me the full application and your updated CV so that I can be prepared to write the reference letter.
How to ask for a reference letter
Reference letters are important for job applications and for some summer school and travel grant applications. Lab members will receive a reference letter from Winnifred, unless I feel that it isn’t possible to write a positive letter (this will be openly communicated).
The first letter for a new lab member requires a lot of time to write. Please give me at least two weeks’ notice.
Your email should also include the following information: (a) type of position or event; (b) copy of your application (e.g., your statement of meeting the selection criteria / your statement of suitability and intent to apply for the role) and CV; (c) deadline for reference letter, format requirements if known , and how to submit.
Please also send a reminder 3 days before the deadline if you have not heard from me.
In some cases the process of giving a reference involves your nominating me and then the organisation sending a link or a form. You will need to notify me in advance that that’s coming. If I have not been advised that I am being nominated I may not open the email or complete the form. Also, if I don't remember the student, and I don't know how we worked together, I will not provide the reference.
In some cases (e.g., for many post-doctoral positions), reference letters are only requested if the candidate is short-listed. In this case, typically, you would first ask me in advance if it’s ok to nominate me as a referee. Then, you might email me to let me know that you have applied. Finally, if you are short-listed, you would send me the full application and your updated CV so that I can be prepared to write the reference letter.
