PAR LAB | Dr. Elvira Prusaczyk

PAR Lab Director

Dr. Elvira Prusaczyk

I earned my MA and PhD degrees in Social/Personality Psychology at Brock University, and my BA in Psychology from Toronto Metropolitan University. As you can see, I can’t get enough of psychology!

I remember sitting in an Applied Social Psychology class during my undergraduate degree, learning about Kurt Lewin’s person-environment interactions. I didn’t know it then, but my own career would be guided by the idea that to best understand how and why people behave the way that they do, we need to understand who they are and what social contexts they inhabit.

Mentorship is at the heart of my work. I support student researchers as whole people, recognizing that excellence requires both intellectual rigour and personal well-being. In the lab, I provide structured training in research design, data collection, data analysis, and scientific writing, while also encouraging practices that build resilience, self and other-awareness, and balance. My goal is to help students succeed and carry these strengths into their careers, communities, and lives beyond the university.

Beyond teaching and research, I contribute to service and community engagement at StFX, including leading weekly mindfulness sessions and serving on committees that highlight student flourishing.

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/elvira-prusaczyk

Students Are Researchers Here

Students are central to the PAR Lab.

Undergraduate researchers, honours students, and research assistants contribute meaningfully throughout the research process, including developing research questions, reviewing literature, designing studies, recruiting participants, collecting and analyzing data, interpreting findings, writing results, presenting at conferences, and communicating research beyond academia.

Several major directions within the PAR lab have grown directly from student research, including the development of child-friendly measures of ideological beliefs that now form the foundation of our childhood prejudice program.

My goal is to help students learn how to think like researchers, ask difficult questions, work collaboratively, communicate responsibly, and see themselves as capable of contributing new knowledge. Student training across our projects includes research ethics, quantitative and qualitative analysis, community-engaged methods, scientific writing, conference presentations, and public knowledge mobilization.