Achieving racial justice and equality between White people and People of Colour requires members of advantaged and disadvantaged groups to unite across intergroup divides and act together for social change (i.e., in cross-group collective action). However, we do not know much about the psychological processes that lead these groups to work through pre-existing conflicts (e.g., prejudice, complex power dynamics) and unite across group boundaries. At the heart of my PhD is a practical aim: to identify the conditions under which advantaged and disadvantaged groups may come together to act for social change.

My thesis is informed by the social identity approach to intergroup relations and proposes a novel, conceptual integration of the intergroup contact literature and value-based moral repair literature.