Rate My Professor Emina Subasic

Associate Professor Emina Subasic is a social psychologist in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Bachelor of Social Work from the University of Queensland in 2002, First Class Honours from the Australian National University in 2003, and a PhD in Psychology from the Australian National University from 2004 to 2008. Arriving in Australia as a refugee from Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1997, she undertook postdoctoral fellowships at the Australian National University from 2006 to 2009 and held an ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship from 2010 to 2014 as lead investigator on a Discovery Project examining the nexus of leadership and social change. Since 2014, she has worked at the University of Newcastle, advancing from Lecturer to Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor. Since 2020, she has been Program Convenor for the Master of Business Psychology.

Subasic's research interests lie at the intersection of social identity, social influence, and change in social relations. She investigates collective mobilization for social change, leadership and organisational change, mobilizing men and women for gender equality, political solidarity as a social change process, school identification, school functioning, and student learning, and enhancing social harmony in diverse communities. Her approach involves theory development and quantitative methodologies, including experimental and survey methods, emphasizing that psychological transformation of the self through changes in social identities drives change in people, groups, and societies. She received the Women in Research Fellowship from the University of Newcastle in 2017-2018. Key publications include journal articles such as 'Should “sisters” be doing it by themselves? Leadership, allyship, and mobilization for gender equality' (Political Psychology, 2025, with Ryan, Joye, Young, Hardacre, Reynolds, and Branscombe), 'Symbolic Action Motivates Further Collective Action by Increasing Identification With the Common Cause' (Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 2026, with Bingley, Mirnajafi, Rhee, Robinson, Stanley, Wilson, and Haslam), 'Collective mobilisation as a contest for influence: Leading for change or against the status quo?' (European Journal of Social Psychology, 2022, with Mohamed, Reynolds, Rushton, and Haslam), and book chapters like 'Social identity and behavior change: Longitudinal research in community and school settings' (2025, with Reynolds, Zhou, Cardenas, and Klik), 'Making Us Matter: Social Identity, Leadership and Collective Agency' (2025, with Reynolds, Jones, and Zhou), and 'Leadership and social (identity) change in organisations: Mobilisation for gender equality at work' (2025, with Ryan). Her work contributes to understandings of group processes, social identity in organizations, social change, and leadership.