Associate ProfessorIlan Dar-Nimrod

Project Opportunities

1. Project title: Blurring Boundaries: Reducing Mental Health Stigma through Continuum-Based Interventions
Project summary: Mental health stigma remains a major barrier to well-being, treatment-seeking, and social inclusion. Traditional biomedical models and public campaigns often frame mental illness as a “disease like any other,” assuming discrete boundaries between the mentally ill and the mentally healthy. While these approaches aim to reduce blame, research—including our own—shows they often exacerbate stigma by reinforcing perceptions of difference, increasing social distancing, and fostering pessimism about recovery. This project introduces an innovative alternative: targeting the discreteness bias—the belief that mental illness categories are rigid and non-overlapping.

Building on preliminary evidence that continuum-based narratives reduce stigma and increase perceived similarity between groups, this PhD project will systematically test whether undermining discreteness beliefs can reduce prejudice and improve outcomes for individuals with mental illness. Through a series of pre-registered experiments, the candidate will examine interpersonal effects (e.g., stigma reduction) and intrapersonal effects (e.g., willingness to disclose mental health struggles) among the general public and clinical populations. The research will also explore cross-cultural variations and mechanisms underlying these effects, such as perceived similarity and social dominance orientation.

This project offers a unique opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge stigma-reduction strategies with strong theoretical foundations and real-world implications. The successful candidate will gain expertise in experimental design, advanced statistical modeling, and intervention development, while collaborating with leading scholars in social and clinical psychology. The findings will inform public health campaigns and mental health advocacy, with the potential to transform how society understands and addresses mental illness.

This opportunity/project is part of the Faculty of Science Australian Research Council (ARC) Scholarship scheme and is now advertised on the Scholarship Office website. Applications are open and will close on 18 January 2026.

2. Project title: Challenging Racial Boundaries: Innovative Strategies to Reduce Racism
Project summary: Racial prejudice continues to undermine social cohesion and equality worldwide. A key psychological driver of racism is essentialist thinking—the belief that racial groups possess immutable, defining essences. While previous interventions have focused on replacing biological explanations with sociocultural ones, these approaches often fail to address a critical component of essentialism: the discreteness bias—the perception that racial categories are sharply divided and fundamentally distinct.

This PhD project will investigate whether challenging the discreteness bias can reduce racial prejudice and stereotyping. Using scientifically grounded narratives that highlight genetic admixture, gradual gene frequency clines, and historical shifts in racial categorization, the candidate will conduct pre-registered experiments in Australia and Canada. These studies will assess whether undermining rigid racial boundaries decreases racism, reduces endorsement of stereotypes (including ingroup stereotypes), and fosters greater perceived similarity across racial groups. A longitudinal component will evaluate the durability of these effects over time, while analyses of mediators and moderators will illuminate the psychological processes involved.

The successful candidate will join an international collaboration with experts in cultural psychology and prejudice reduction, gaining experience in experimental design, cross-cultural research, and advanced statistical modeling. This project offers the chance to develop interventions with profound societal impact, contributing to global efforts to combat racism and promote inclusivity. Findings will inform educational programs, diversity training, and public policy initiatives, aligning with national and international priorities for social justice.

This opportunity/project is part of the Faculty of Science Australian Research Council (ARC) Scholarship scheme and is now advertised on the Scholarship Office website. Applications are open and will close on 18 January 2026.

3. Project Title: Am I my genes? DNA, identity, and free will. 

Summary of opportunity:

One of the most central discourses of modern philosophy identifies human beings as “causal animals” in a perpetual search for underlying causes of different occurrences they encounter. The last few decades witnessed the science of genetics advancing in leaps and bounds accompanied by increased media attention on and societal fascination with these sequences of deoxyribonucleic acid as causal explanations for a variety of phenomena. Regardless of the veracity of some of the genetic etiological accounts, recent theoretical and empirical research indicates that these etiological perceptions appear to activate “genetic essentialism.” According to this framework genetic attributions increase the likelihood that an outcome is perceived as immutable, predetermined, and natural. As such, genetic attributions activate stronger discrimination based on social categorizations such as gender, race, and ethnicity for example. One of the common threads of these biases is the effect on perceived agency and evaluations of personal choice. Thus, perceptions of personal control and choice are of main concern as are the consequances of the changes in these perceptions.

Opportunity synopsis:

Do we behave differently after we learn that scientist discover the “obesity gene?” Do we judge men's sexual behaviour differently if we learn about an evolutionary account for males' promiscuity ("spread your seeds" hypothesis) vs. a social constructivist one? How are we affected if we suddenly find out that we have a gene associated with alcoholism? What happens to women’s math performance once they learn of a genetic (vs. experiential) explanation for men’s alleged superior math abilities? These questions have been recently addressed in some of my studies. However, they represent only the tip of the iceberg in this line of research with relevant questions that address ethnic and racial identity, health communications, genetic counselling, genes-by-environment interactions, and other issues still necessitate empirical evaluations.

4. Project Title: Psychological underpinnings and correlates of sex and sexuality

Summary of opportunity:

Sex and sexuality have fascinated people throughout the ages. Ample literary works, theological and moral musings, philosophical accounts, social discourse, and popular presentations of various aspects of different aspects of their related behaviour and their underlying meaning have been depicted, communicated for a wide variety of purposes. People’s curiosity about sex seems to know no bound. Systematic research on sexuality from a psychological perspective enriches our understanding of that core element of being a person in the cultural and social context and one’s experience of sexuality forms and relates to many other central elements of our personhood.

Opportunity synopsis:

What is the origin of our sexual orientation- is it determined by birth or changes with societal interactions? This interesting question is one that most people have an opinion on. How does those opinions and beliefs shape psychological outcomes such as stigma consciousness and internalized homonegativity among Lesbian, Bisexual and Gay individuals? How do they relate to these individuals’ psychological wellbeing? How does the choice of one’s sexual orientation label (e.g., “gay”, “pansexual”, “queer”) relate to their attraction to others people? How does it relate to their depressive symptomology? How do people evaluate individuals in consensual non-monogamous relationships?  Do such evaluations relate to people’s characteristics? Those above questions are some of the questions being studied in my lab. However, they represent only a small segment of fascinating research questions on the psychological aspects of our sexuality. Join us in asking the new, cutting edge questions using the best available methodologies.