Fouad Bou Zeineddine is an assistant professor of psychology at The American University in Cairo as of July, 2017. Bou Zeineddine is a published scholar in biology, psychology, and political science. After receiving a Master’s degree in genetics and molecular biology from Clark University in 2010, he earned his PhD in social psychology from the University of Connecticut, USA, in 2015, with a concentration in Political Science. He then pursued a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in the psychology of intergroup relations and social identity at the Social Psychology Lab at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, overlapping with his arrival to AUC. Bou Zeineddine’s research interests are in the cross-cultural and transnational dynamics of the psychology of social justice, care, and well-being, particularly as they relate to human commons and public goods. Needs, power, empathy, and relationship regulation in people’s economic and political lives are central topics in his efforts to uncover the psychological and behavioral underpinnings to human resilience and empowerment across national and cultural contexts. In 2015, he was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of KwaZulu-Natal under the auspices of the South African National Research Foundation. In the period from 2011-2014 he received several research grants, as co-investigator, from the American Psychological Association, National Science Foundation, and the University of Connecticut Research Foundation. In 2010, he received the Outstanding Scholars Program Fellowship at the University of Connecticut. His work has been featured in the media by the International Society of Political Psychology and Green Horizon Magazine.

Bou Zeineddine’s latest research examines the structural, relational, and psychological aspects of intergroup relations and collective action in the presence of shared public goods or commons. In social activism, for example, while activists in general had socially dominant, competitive, cooperative, or avoidant orientations towards their target populations, Bou Zeineddine also found that there were groups that practiced social mutualism, or the empowerment of shared resources, as their favored strategy to achieve self-empowerment. These groups, termed alter-cultures, exhibited unique relational and psychological characteristics compared with other kinds of activist groups, particularly in their understandings of power and empathy, and in their psychological resilience and empowerment. This work showed that a “commoning” orientation in activism can lead, under certain conditions, to psychological cycles of increasing feelings of collective efficacy, inspiration, and satisfaction, and reduces feelings of frustration, anger, blame, and injustice. Working with Dr. Kevin Durrheim’s Virtual Interaction Application (VIAPPL) lab, Bou Zeineddine has used game experiments and computational models to extend this work. Attending to and interacting with one or more commons under different conditions alters behavior and psychology at different levels simultaneously; for example, changing the environment to increase objective or perceived vulnerability or growth at the level of either the self, group, or commons changed individual and collective psychology, as well as changing the optimal individual and group behaviors needed to achieve mutually beneficial and sustainable growth. This work has many potential practical applications for civic organizations, public policy, and governance, as well as individual social coping and economic and environmental sustainability and self-sufficiency.