Dr James Liu

Dr Liu is adjunct fellow at the Centre for Applied Cross-cultural Research, and professor of psychology and head of school at Massey University.

James Hou-fu Liu is adjunct fellow at the Centre for Applied Cross-cultural Research at Victoria University of Wellington. He is also professor of psychology and head of school at Massey University.

His research is in cross-cultural political psychology, specializing in narratives and representations of history, and their relationship to identity and prejudice. He was editor-in-chief of the Asian Journal of Social Psychology from 2008–2011, and is currently president-elect of the Asian Association of Social Psychology.

His interest in studies of India and Indian culture stem from both an interest in how the history of India influences its contemporary intergroup relations both internally and externally, and collaborations stimulated by students. The social (group) identities of people in the subcontinent of India exert a particular fascination for James, who describes himself as a “Chinese-American-New Zealander”.

Among his papers regarding Indian history and identity (co-authored with former PhD student Sammyh Khan) are 'Intergroup Attributions and ethnocentrism in the Indian subcontinent: The fundamental attribution error revisited', Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology, and 'Competing narratives of nation building in pre-independence India: Analyzing Gandhi, Nehru, Savarkar, and Golwarkar as entrepreneurs of identity through their historical narratives', chapter for Warring with Words: Narrative and Metaphor in Domestic and International Politics.

For more details, see Professor Liu’s profile.