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I hold a BSc in Psychology (2018) and MSc in Clinical and Health Psychology (cum laude, 2020) from KU Leuven, Belgium, and MSc in Psychology of Intercultural Relations (18/20, 2022) from Iscte-IUL, Portugal. I completed a remote Erasmus exchange at the University of Oslo (01/2021–06/2021). My MSc thesis at KU Leuven was part of a PhD project in second language acquisition and cognitive psychology using EEG methods (16/20). My thesis at Iscte focused on intergroup relations and is currently prepared for publication: Feeling, Thinking, Acting: The Role of Subjective Social Class and Social Class Identity on Emotions, Attitudes and Prosocial Behavior towards Muslim Immigrants in Belgium (19/20), and has been presented at various national and international conferences and small group meetings, e.g., XIX Meeting in Psychology (Iscte-IUL, Lisbon, 2024), European Network Meeting for Sociocultural Psychology (CuPsyNet & EASP small group meeting; University of Cyprus, Nicosia, 2024), FoWOP Small Group Meeting (Milan, Italy, 2024). With my PhD project, I attended the 2025 EASP Summer School in the Social Identity workstream under workstream leaders Dominic Abrams, Michael Hogg and Fanny Lalot. Additionally, I attended the Second Social Identity Summer School 2025 in the workstream Health and Wellbeing under workstream leaders Catherine Haslam, Mark Tarrant and Laura Hollands. As a research assistant at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF, 04/2021–12/2021), I contributed to a project examining how threat scenarios (Islamist terror incidents) influence national and European identities. Between 05/2024 and 11/2025, I was a research assistant in the EU-funded KidLe project, which co-designed a game to support the inclusion of migrant children (ages 4–8). The project has been presented at several conferences, e.g., SNIP 05/2025, Porto. I contributed to co-designing the game, literature reviews, focus groups, expert interviews, dissemination activities (e.g., blog articles and Newsletters), and workshops, in collaboration with researchers from psychology, education, and political science. I offer psychological counselling in my private practice since 01/2024. Previously, I interned at the day clinic of the psychiatric department of the general hospital of Lier, Belgium (09/2019–05/2020), where I worked independently in a multidisciplinary team delivering individual and group therapy, assessments, psychoeducation, and relaxation training. I volunteered for Collective Aid in Belgrade, Serbia (08/2021–10/2021), supporting refugees and homeless individuals, coordinating WASH centre activities, and developed a toolkit on retraumatization and PTSD for other volunteers to use while taking border violence reports (08/2021-10/2021). Since 05/2023, I have been active in Humans Before Borders, a Portugal-based collective supporting refugee rights through educational and collective actions. Among other things, we developed and conducted a training for intercultural skills of healthcare professionals, which has been presented at the WONCA World Conference 2025. I speak German, English, and Dutch fluently (native/C2), and am conversational in Portuguese (~B1). Currently, I am pursuing a joint PhD at CIS_Iscte (Portugal) and KU Leuven (Belgium), focusing on prosocial behavior and rehumanization in intergroup relations. My goal is to build a career as both an intercultural researcher and a clinical psychologist specialized in supporting people in vulnerable situations.
Identification

Personal identification

Full name
Theresa Zagers

Citation names

  • Zagers, Theresa

Author identifiers

Ciência ID
3410-D022-26EF

Email addresses

  • zagerstheresa@gmail.com (Professional)

Telephones

Mobile phone
  • (+351) 920250450 (Professional)

Websites

  • theresazagers.com (Professional)

Knowledge fields

  • Social Sciences - Psychology
  • Social Sciences - Psychology

Languages

Language Speaking Reading Writing Listening Peer-review
German (Mother tongue)
English Proficiency (C2) Proficiency (C2) Proficiency (C2) Proficiency (C2) Proficiency (C2)
Dutch Proficiency (C2) Proficiency (C2) Advanced (C1) Proficiency (C2) Proficiency (C2)
Portuguese Upper intermediate (B2) Upper intermediate (B2) Upper intermediate (B2) Upper intermediate (B2) Elementary (A2)
Education
Degree Classification
2023/10/20 - 2027/09/30
Ongoing
PhD in Psychology (Ensino básico 3º ciclo)
ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa Centro de Investigação e Intervenção Social, Portugal

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Faculteit Psychologie en Pedagogische Wetenschappen, Belgium
2020/09/28 - 2022/12/06
Concluded
Psychology of Intercultural Relations (Mestrado)
ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal
2021/01/20 - 2021/06/01
Concluded
Psychology (Master)
Major in Erasmus Semester
Universitetet i Oslo, Norway
2018/09/24 - 2020/07/06
Concluded
Clinical and Health Psychology (Mestrado)
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
2014/09/20 - 2018/07/05
Concluded
Psychology (Bachelor)
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Faculteit Psychologie en Pedagogische Wetenschappen, Belgium
Cum fructu
Affiliation

Science

Category
Host institution
Employer
2024/05/15 - 2025/11/30 Research Assistant (Research) ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal
ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal
2021/04/01 - 2021/12/17 Research Assistant (Research) Leibniz-Institut Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, Germany
Leibniz-Institut Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, Germany

Others

Category
Host institution
Employer
2024/01/01 - Current Freelance Theresa Zagers, Portugal
2023/10/20 - Current PhD Student ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa Centro de Investigação e Intervenção Social, Portugal
ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa Centro de Investigação e Intervenção Social, Portugal
(...)
2023/01/04 - Current Volunteer Humans Before Borders, Portugal
2021/08/05 - 2022/10/01 Volunteer Collective Aid, Serbia
Collective Aid, Serbia
2021/04/01 - 2021/12/17 Intern Leibniz-Institut Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, Germany
Leibniz-Institut Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, Germany
2019/09/16 - 2020/05/01 Intern Heilig-Hartziekenhuis Lier, Belgium
Heilig-Hartziekenhuis Lier, Belgium
2018/02/01 - 2018/03/31 Intern CGG Vagga vzw, Belgium
CGG Vagga vzw, Belgium
Projects

Grant

Designation Funders
2025/07/20 - 2027/08/01 Exploring the latent profiles of environmental (in)activists
xx
PhD Student Fellow
ISCTE - Knowledge and Innovation, Portugal
European Association of Social Psychology
Ongoing
2024/05/15 - 2025/11/30 KidLe Project – Playing for inclusion: Developing an intercultural game as a pedagogic tool for the inclusion of pupils with migrant bacKground in new Learning environments (KidLe)
Integration into Research Grant Fellow
ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal
Ongoing
Outputs

Publications

Thesis / Dissertation
  1. "Feeling, Thinking, Acting: The Role of Subjective Social Class and Social Class Identity on Emotions, Attitudes and Prosocial Behavior towards Muslim Immigrants in Belgium". Master, ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, 2022.
  2. "The Impact of L2 Word-Focused Instruction on Meaning Acquisition as Measured with Event-Related Potentials through a Semantic Relatedness Task. Does the Word Order Matter". Master, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2020.
Activities

Oral presentation

Presentation title Event name
Host (Event location)
2025/05/30 The KidLe project: Developing an intercultural game as a pedagogic tool for the inclusion of pupils with migrant bacKground in new Learning environments XII Simpósio Nacional de Investigação em Psicologia
(Porto, Portugal)
2024/11/23 Feeling, Thinking, Acting: The Role of Subjective Social Class and Social Class Identity on emotions, attitudes and prosocial behavior towards Muslim Migrants in Belgium CuPsyNet & EASP Small Group Meeting, European Network Meeting for Sociocultural Psychology
2024/07/17 The KidLe Project: Developing games to support the inclusion of young children with migrant background ICRE24 : 4th Porto International Conference on Research in Education
2024/05/23 Feeling, Thinking, Acting: The Role of Subjective Social Class and Social Class Identity on emotions, attitudes and prosocial behavior towards Muslim Migrants in Belgium . XIX PhD Meeting in Psychology
Iscte-IUL

Event organisation

Event name
Type of event (Role)
Institution / Organization
2023/10/20 - 2024/05/24 The XIX PhD meeting in Psychology is a scientific conference of Psychology students that aims to promote debate surrounding current topics of interest in different fields of psychological research. (2024/05/23 - 2024/05/24)
Conference (Member of the Organising Committee)
ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal
2023/05/01 - 2023/12/16 Organizing member in the Jornadas Health Before Borders, a conference aiming to increase the debate and knowledge in the area of migration and health, through the promotion of training activities for health professionals. (2023/12/15 - 2023/12/16)
Conference (Member of the Organising Committee)
Humans Before Borders, Portugal

Event participation

Activity description
Type of event
Event name
Institution / Organization
2024/07/12 - Current Presented the KidLe project to teaching staff at the TEIP Jornadas of School Cluster Passos Manuel in Lisbon, Portugal.
2025/08/25 - 2025/09/01 This summer school brought together PhD researchers interested in all things social identity! We engaged with leading experts in the field and build international connections with like-minded peers. 2025 Second Social Identity Summer School
European Association of Social Psychology, Germany

Associatie KU Leuven, Belgium

The University of Queensland - Dutton Park Campus, Australia
2025/07/20 - 2025/07/30 The 2025 Summer School for the European Association of Social Psychology was hosted at the University of Kent in the historic city of Canterbury in Kent – the “Garden of England”. The theme – “Growing the Future of Social Psychology” – speaks to exactly what these summer schools have always been about: planting new ideas, nurturing emerging talent, and cultivating the connections that will shape the field for years to come. 2025 EASP Summer School
European Association of Social Psychology, Germany
2024/07/02 - 2024/07/05 Volunteer at the 21st Annual Conference of IMISCOE.
Conference
21st Annual Conference of IMISCOE
ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal

Association member

Society Organization name Role
2025/04/01 - Current Ordem dos Psicólogos Portugueses Member
2025/02/07 - Current De Psychologencommissie (Belgian Commission of Psychologists) Member
2025/01/01 - Current European Association of Social Psychology Member