Amalia María

Álvarez Benjumea

Amalia is a Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Goods and Policies (IPP).

Amalia holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Cologne, Germany. Prior to joinig the IPP, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Mannheim School of Social Sciences and a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn (Germany). 

Her research examines how social norms emerge and evolve, with a particular emphasis on the roles of social feedback and contextual cues in shaping perception and conformity. Much of her work has explored norms that proscribe the overt expression of prejudice—be it racism, xenophobia, or sexism. Over the past decades, these norms have become a formidable barrier to the public expression of politically incorrect views in modern societies. Yet, in recent years, the rise of online hate speech and the ascendance of populist parties and leaders have begun to erode these deterrents. 

Her work has been published in leading outlets such as the European Sociological Review, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), British Journal of Political Science and American Sociological Review.

She was a member of the International Max Planck Research School on Adapting Behavior in a Fundamentally Uncertain World and has served as a visiting researcher at the Norms and Networks Cluster (NNC) at the University of Groningen and the Department of Sociology at New York University (NYU).