Dr Mariska Kappmeier was our excellent guest speaker Thursday 24th March. Mariska’s talk titled ‘Trust in Times of Covid’ vividly took us back to the early days of the pandemic in 2020 from peaceful lockdown to a clearer understanding of why the 2022 violent protests opposing vaccination mandates and authoritism evolved. Mariska is a researcher at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago. Her research delves into understanding trust and trustworthiness “who trusts whom to do what?”. The framework is an ‘Intergroup trust model’ based on five dimensions: competence, integrity, compassion and compatibility and how these impact on our security. Using the model, Mariska carries out research and investigation to help us make sense of people’s thinking and behaviour. Using recent examples from the pandemic, Mariska skilfully explained how the pandemic has created the ‘perfect storm to break social cohesion’.Mariska has a PhD in Psychology from the University of Hamburg. Prior to joining the National Centre for Peace and Conflict studies at the University of Otago about 5 years ago, Mariska spent 10 years in the USA where she was a researcher in the Psyhology Department of Harvard University. With the insights of her experiences of living in Germany, Moldova, the USA and New Zealand, and her interest in peoples’ behaviour, current affairs and politics, Markiska was well placed to offer interesting views and lively discussion at our meeting on topical issues such as far right extremism, how social media is used to undermine democracy in our world.
On a side note, Mariska teaches ‘hybrid’ classes. This means she has students joining her class from countries as far away as Myanmar and Guadalope, but also has people present in person in class at the same time. Given how good Thursday’s talk was, I think it would be fascinating to attend her classes!
