Alex Haslam (d76-80) is a Professor of Psychology and Australian Laureate Fellow at the University of Queensland, and a former winner of the British Psychology Society’s Presidents’ Award for distinguished contributions to psychological science. 
 
Alex has recently published a new book Together Apart The Psychology of COVID-19 which looks at explaining the psychology surrounding COVID-19. The book is free to download here and explores a range of issues including leadership, behaviour change, social isolation, and social (dis)order. 
 
Alex explains, “Until a vaccine is developed to halt the coronavirus, controlling the spread of infection depends on behavioural changes and ultimately human psychology. Dealing effectively with the pandemic means understanding how people behave just as much as understanding how the virus behaves. In this context, governments around the world are recognising psychology not only as relevant to individual-level outcomes (e.g. mental health) but also as integral to societal level outcomes (e.g. the maintenance of social cohesion and public order).”
 
“The pandemic is about group psychology, in particular, and about the processes that lead people to act for the interests of their community. Our book attempts to lay bare the psychology of “us-ness” that makes this possible.”
 
Alex has two other books coming out this year including the second edition of his award-winning volume The New Psychology of Leadership: Identity, Influence and Power, and a new book on The New Psychology of Sport: The Social Identity Approach.  Speaking to Alex, he said the latter volume was in part an attempt to make up for his poor performance on the playing fields of Felsted. “I was, by some measure, the worst sportsperson in the school”, he said, “the rest of my life can be explained as an attempt to atone for this.”