Biography

Mikhail Lyubansky, Ph.D., is a member of the teaching faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he teaches Psychology of Race and Ethnicity and Theories of Psychotherapy. His research and writing interests include racial/ethnic group relations and restorative justice. He is a regular contributor to anthologies on popular culture, including Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Twilight, published by BenBella and recently co-authored a book on the Russian-Jewish diaspora: Building a diaspora: Russian Jews in Israel, Germany, and the United States.  He writes a blog about race and racial issues for Psychology Today called Between the Lines and is currently working on a book titled Socially-Responsible Psychology: A Vision for a Global Age.

Specializations

• Race relations, Restorative Circles

Research Description

My research interests are focused broadly on race and culture, including identity development and group relations in both immigrant and minority populations. In the past few years, I have become very interested in restorative justice, especially a restorative practice developed in Brazil called Restorative Circles (RC).  I'm currently in the process of shifting my research to this topic.

A brief summary of Restorative Circles (and restorative principles) is available in this article I wrote for Psychology Today. A more academic discussion of restorative circles and how they can be used to engage racial conflict can be found in this Peace Review article that I co-wrote with RC developer Dominic Barter.

I also recently completed a series of studies with Roy Eidelson and other colleagues examining race group differences in Americans' beliefs about their racial and national identity groups and the extent to which these beliefs explain attitudes and behaviors associated with group conflict. Among other things, we've found that although Whites are more likely to report being involved in mainstream American culture, both Whites and Blacks feel equally "American." Furthermore, no significant differences exist between Blacks and Whites regarding their perceptions of their national group's vulnerability and experience of injustice, though, Blacks did perceive the national group as being significantly more helpless. In a related project, we are examining conflict between prison inmates and corrections officers (COs) to determine whether stronger beliefs about one's ingroup (i.e., inmates/COs) are associated with greater levels of aggression toward the outgroup, after controlling for type of crime and time in prison.

Finally, as a child immigrant from the former Soviet Union, I feel a connection to this immigrant group and have written about its experiences on multiple occasions, particularly in a 2006 book-length, multi-method study of Russian-Jewish immigration titled "Building a diaspora: Russian Jews in Israel, Germany, and the USA."  The project consisted of survey data on behavioral preferences (e.g., food, music) attitudes (e.g., child rearing), language usage, and demographics from 300-500 Russian-Jewish immigrants in each country (total N=1253), qualitative interviews with Russian-Jewish leaders, and content analysis of Russian-language and mainstream media coverage of this immigrant group in each of the three countries.

Education

• Ph.D. Michigan State University (2000)

Distinctions / Awards

• Psi Chi Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award, 2010-2011

Webpages

• Personal homepage
• Political blog (OpEdNews)
• Popular Writing
• Psychology blog (Psychology Today)
• Psychology of Race and Ethnicity course
• Research page
• Theories of Psychotherapy course
• Vitae

Courses

• Abnormal Psychology (course supervisor)
• Psychology of Race and Ethnicity
• Theories of Psychotherapy
• Behavioral Science, School of Medicine