People – Comparative Culturology Lab

Lab Members & Collaborators

Meet the diverse team of researchers, scholars and innovators driving our cultural research forward.

Research Team

Dominik Balazka

Research Associate

Dominik holds a PhD in Social Sciences from KU Leuven and a joint PhD in Sociology and Methodology of Social Research from the University of Milan and the University of Turin. His research focuses on non-religion, sociology of religion, cultural sociology, secularization, identity, and public perceptions of Artificial Intelligence. Methodologically, he is interested in survey research, data ethics, and computational approaches, particularly Natural Language Processing. At the Comparative Culturology Lab, he contributes to the project “Beyond Hofstede: The Significance and Implications of Refined Individualism-Collectivism Measures.”

Judit Végh

Intercultural Psychologist & Researcher Intercultural Trainer

Judit is an intercultural psychologist, researcher, and trainer whose work focuses on global mobility, intercultural adaptation, global careers, and transnational families. She is particularly interested in how individuals and families navigate cultural transitions and maintain relationships, well-being, and professional development across national and cultural contexts. Her work bridges academic research and applied intercultural practice.

Ram Fares

Research Associate

Ram holds a Research MSc in Social Psychology from Tilburg University, the Netherlands, and a BA in Psychology with a minor in SWANA Politics from Haigazian University, Lebanon. His research interests include prejudice, intergroup relations and conflict, collective identity, and collective memory, with particular attention to how representations of history and culture shape group processes. At the Comparative Culturology Lab, he contributes to the project “Beyond Hofstede: The Significance and Implications of Refined Individualism-Collectivism Measures.”

Xiaoyi Lin

PhD Student Lingnan University, Hong Kong

Xiaoyi is a PhD student at Lingnan University. Her research interests broadly concern cultural values, cross-cultural differences, and the social and ecological conditions associated with cultural variation. At the Comparative Culturology Lab, she contributes to research examining the relationship between cultural values and demographic change.

Yulia Afanasyeva

PhD Student Lingnan University, Hong Kong

Yulia is a PhD student at Lingnan University. She is interested in how values vary within and across societies and what these differences mean for people and social life. Her PhD project looks at value heterogeneity and social cohesion, especially how value diversity relates to trust, civic engagement, and national identity. She mainly works with large-scale cross-national and longitudinal survey data and enjoys quantitative comparative research.

Chengyu Ye

Research Assistant

Chengyu is an undergraduate student at Lingnan University, majoring in Translation with minors in Economics and Political Science. His research interests lie at the intersection of language, culture, and quantitative social science, with particular emphasis on empirically examining cultural differences through linguistic and behavioral data.

Lab Collaborators

Anneli Kaasa

Professor of Social and Cultural Studies in Economics University of Tartu, Estonia

Anneli Kaasa is Professor of Social and Cultural Studies in Economics and Head of the Chair of Economic Theory at the University of Tartu, where she has worked since 1998 and earned her PhD in 2004. Her research focuses on measuring cultural differences and their effects on social and economic phenomena. She teaches courses including Cultural Context for Economy and Business, Higher Mathematics, and Microeconomics.

Christian Welzel

Professor of Political Science Leuphana University, Germany

Christian Welzel is Professor of Political Culture Research at Leuphana University, where he heads the Center for the Study of Democracy at the Institute of Political Science. A former President and current Vice-President of the World Values Survey Association and a Fellow of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, his research focuses on democratic theory, sociocultural evolution, empowerment, cultural change, and democratization.

Michael Harris Bond

Visiting Chair Professor of Psychology Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Michael Harris Bond is a cross-cultural social psychologist renowned for his research on Chinese interpersonal processes within multicultural frameworks. He taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for 35 years and edited The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Psychology (2010). His co-authored works include Understanding Social Psychology Across Cultures (2013) and the co-edited Handbook of Chinese Organizational Behaviour (2012).

Michael Minkov

Professor of Cross-Cultural Awareness Varna University of Management, Bulgaria

Michael Minkov holds a PhD in Social Anthropology and an MA in Linguistics from Sofia University. His primary research interests concern national cultures and societal differences. He was a close academic associate and co-author of Geert Hofstede and has published extensively on expanding, updating, and revising Hofstede's model of national culture.

Oliver Sng

Assistant Professor of Psychological Science University of California, Irvine, USA

Oliver Sng is Assistant Professor of Psychological Science at the University of California, Irvine. He received his PhD in Social Psychology from Arizona State University and his BA in Psychology from the National University of Singapore. His research applies an evolutionary perspective to human social behavior, with particular emphasis on the origins of cultural psychological variation and social stereotypes. He leads the Evolution, Culture, and Stereotyping Lab at UC Irvine.

Raül Tormos

Head of Methodology and Research Center for Public Opinion Studies, Catalonia, Spain

Raül Tormos (PhD, UAB) is a quantitative social scientist and Head of Methodology and Research at the Center for Public Opinion Studies (CEO), the official survey research institute of the Catalan Government. He also teaches political behavior at the Open University of Catalonia. His research focuses on public opinion, cultural values, political behavior, and social change, with methodological expertise in age-period-cohort analysis, multilevel modelling, time-series analysis, causal inference, experiments, and survey methods.

Vivian Vignoles

Professor of Social and Cross-Cultural Psychology University of Sussex, UK

Vivian Vignoles is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Sussex. His research examines identity construction, maintenance, and defense across cultural contexts using advanced quantitative and qualitative methods. He founded and leads the Culture and Identity Research Network (CIRN), an international collaboration spanning more than 30 countries, and has published extensively on identity and cross-cultural psychology.