Phillip Hammack receives early career award in psychology

Phillip. L. Hammack, assistant professor of psychology at UC Santa Cruz, has been named recipient of the 2011 Early Career Award of the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence: Division of Peace Psychology, American Psychological Association (APA).

The award is the second such honor for Hammack in the past year. Last fall, he was named recipient of the Louise Kidder Early Career Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues of the APA.

Hammack joined UCSC in 2007 and is the author of Narrative and the Politics of Identity: The Cultural Psychology of Israeli and Palestinian Youth (Oxford University Press, 2011).

This academic year, Hammack is a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow. He is writing another book, tentatively titled Can Talking Help? Dialogue and the Politics of Difference.

Hammack said his new book picks up where the first one left off. "I ask what kind of dialogue we seek to foster among groups who view one another as fundamentally “different”—in the case of Israelis and Palestinians, so different that they engage in acts of mutual delegitimization and (at the extreme) violence."

The early career award includes a $500 prize and will be presented at the APA annual convention in August held in Orlando, Fla.