The Institute of Psychology - News

Professor Volli Kalm, Rector of the University of Tartu (10 February 1953 – 23 December 2017)

Meelis Luht, former management board member of Eesti Meedia Group, will start work as the Director of Administration of the University of Tartu on 21 August. Rector Volli Kalm said the new director of administration has been in charge of several different areas of activity in his career and is a top leader with international work experience. We can see his capability as well as his desire and ambition to actively contribute to the implementation of the university’s development goals.

The University of Tartu has the largest number of graduates in Estonia—an estimated of 70 000 graduates. Aiming to bring the alumni community closer together, link them more to the university, develop mutual communication and professional cooperation, the University of Tartu launched a network for its alumni (www.utalumni.ee), novel in Estonia as well as Europe, the like of which is also used by the University of Oxford.

On 23 February, on the eve of the 98th anniversary of the Republic of Estonia, President Toomas Hendrik Ilves will bestow state decorations to 99 people for their services to the country. Four UT people are among those to receive the award. "The purpose of decorations is to acknowledge Estonian people and our supporters in foreign countries for their determination in their activities and loyalty to principles that modern Estonia relies upon – openness, democracy, knowledge, innovation," wrote President Ilves in the introduction to his resolution.

Renate Rutiku „Refining the methodology for investigating the neural correlates of consciousness“ Date: 05.11.201

On 28 September 2015 at 14:00 Näituse 2-102 Anni Tamm will defence her doctoral thesis „Conflicts and their management in early childhood and adolescence“ in the Council of the Faculty of the Social Sciences and Education. Supervisor: professor Tiia Tulviste (University of Tartu) Opponent: professor Brett Laursen (Florida Atlantic University) Summary

In the spring semester of 2015, American professor of psychology Lawrence T. White came to Tartu to give lectures at the Institute of Psychology. Larry earned a Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has been a professor of psychology at Beloit College, a highly-regarded liberal arts college in Wisconsin, since 1984.

Project duration: 22 months (01.07.2014 – 30.04.2016) Financed by: European Economic Area Grant Principal investigator at the University of Tartu: Pille Häidkind, lecturer, PhD, Department of Special Education Foreign partners: Department of Early Childhood Education, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Oslo, Norway Special Education Research Institute, Russian Academy of Education, Moscow, Russia

Kelli Lehto „Depression- and anxiety-related gene variants: effects on personality traits and healt-related behaviour“ On 20 February 2015 Kelli Lehto will defence her doctoral thesis „Depression- and anxiety-related gene variants: effects on personality traits and healt-related behaviour“ in the Council of the Faculty of the Social Sciences and Education. Supervisor: Professor Jaanus Harro, University of Tartu Opponent: Professor Zoltan Rihmer, Semmelweis University

Professor White earned a Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has been a professor of psychology at Beloit College, a highly-regarded liberal arts college in Wisconsin, since 1984. Professor White was a Fulbright Scholar at TÜ in 1997. He has directed study abroad programs in Australia, Estonia, and Morocco. His research and publications have focused primarily on issues related to legal psychology and cultural psychology.

On January, 19 at 13.00 Lossi 36-214 dr. Bruno Verschuere's (University of Amsterdam, Ghent University, Maastricht University) public lecture "Memory detection 2.0. from the lab to the web". Summary:

The international research project "Language and auditory brain: studies on central sound representation in auditory cortex" (BerTa-LAB) started on January 1st and is led by Risto Näätänen, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the Institute of Psychology. Participating researchers come from the laboratory of experimental psychology at the University of Tartu, Estonia, and the Bergen fMRI Group at the University of Bergen, Norway. The project was funded from the Norwegian financial mechanism 2009-2014 through the Norwegian-Estonian Research Cooperation Programme.

We are happy to announce the winter school about measuring and analysing EEG data that takes place from 16th to 19th of December in Tartu, Näituse 2 (r. 113). It is co-organised by researchers from the Research Group of Experimental Psychology at the University of Tartu and the Department of Psychology at the University of Jyväskylä. Among others, the supervisors are Piia Astikainen, Paavo Leppänen, Fengyu Cong, Jarmo Hämäläinen, Risto Näätänen, Andero Uusberg, Kairi Kreegipuu and Jaan Aru. We also offer open lectures to everyone interested: December 16th