Harry Lewis

Public worry about Palestine Action ban’s impact on UK democracy, new survey finds

Evidence that the ban affects:
- willingness to protest
- trust in government
- perception of divisions in UK

More here: drive.google.com/drive/folder...

Full report: drive.google.com/drive/folder...

I have plenty of friends who would disagree!

Struggling to find peer reviewed evidence in support of spending all of your money on going to festivals and gigs? Let us help... doi.org/10.1002/casp...

w/ @profjohndrury.bsky.social @hannaeldarwish.bsky.social Danielle Evans, Fiona Green

Our survey of over 2000 attendees, from both UK and USA, and across a wide variety of genres and events (both gigs and festivals) found this:

Swearing, booing and spitting: is crowd behaviour out of control? There was dismay after Rory McIlroy’s wife was hit by a beer at the Ryder Cup. But have crowds always been badly behaved, or is antisocial behaviour getting worse?

Disruptive crowd behaviour back in the news again!
This time it's journalists saying it's a thing.
But crowd safety professionals say 'The overwhelming majority of events take place safely & securely, with no disruption, but those stories rarely make the news.”

www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

Coming soon to a Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology near you...

Barely an hour ago, Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif warned us all:

“If this madness doesn’t end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people’s voices silenced, their faces erased — and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop.”

Israel just killed him.

Open letter from UK university staff: Request for biometric deferral and safe evacuation of incoming Palestinian students and scholars from Gaza to UK Universities More than 40 students currently trapped in Gaza with full scholarships to UK Universities are asking for a safe route to come and study. We, the academic community hoping to welcome these scholars, ca...

>40 students currently trapped in Gaza with full scholarships to UK Universities are asking for a safe route to come and study

Petition for UK academics asking govt to facilitate a biometric visa deferral and open a route of safe passage

Sign & share ⏬️

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

New from Drury & Vestergren. The chapter synthesises decades of research on how participation in collective action transforms people, challenges the field’s focus on predictors, and calls for methods to trace these transformations. It also highlights prefiguration as a key future research direction.

New wall art at @sussex.ac.uk Psychology is from our crowd safety & experience project, with @harrymlewis.bsky.social @sanjeedah.bsky.social @lewisdoyle.bsky.social

'Understanding and Enhancing Felt Safety at Live Music Events through Group Psychology'
by @harrymlewis.bsky.social
Now on Blogspot

drury-sussex-the-crowd.blogspot.com/2025/05/unde...

so in my early dissemination of this work I somehow managed to find and use an image with a typo.... great 😂.

The outstanding team: @hannaeldarwish.bsky.social @lewisdoyle.bsky.social @sanjeedah.bsky.social @freyamills.bsky.social, Danielle Evans, Fi Green & Jane Wen

In case you missed them, we - myself, @profjohndrury.bsky.social and team - have two new preprints and a blog post exploring the psychology of crowds at gigs/festivals:

Disruption: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Wellbeing: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Safety: tinyurl.com/4kcs7x2p

All feedback very welcome!

New pre-print alert....

music crowd

New blogpost, led by @harrymlewis.bsky.social : Understanding and Enhancing Felt Safety at Live Music Events through Group Psychology

blogs.sussex.ac.uk/crowdsidenti...

Side by side images of a crowd at a music festival. The first image shows a small number of people signaling to a medic. The second image shows a larger number of people in the crowd raising their hands to amplify the medic's signal to other medical personnel at the front of the stage.

New blogpost looking at the psychology of felt safety at live music events: tinyurl.com/4kcs7x2p. Draws on interview, ethnographic and survey data. With @profjohndrury.bsky.social @hannaeldarwish.bsky.social Danielle Evans, Fiona Green, @sanjeedah.bsky.social and @lewisdoyle.bsky.social.

This is great - well done Freya!

Fantastic research!

Yeah, a few of our interview p's mentioned alcohol as a contributing factor to disruptive behaviour. But I also think (not something we examined) that more alcohol is consumed where people feel a sense of normative uncertainty, so it may be a cause and symptom (at music gigs, at least)

Our pre-print is now available on our research into experiences of disruptive behaviour at live music events. Available here: osf.io/preprints/ps... @profjohndrury.bsky.social @lewisdoyle.bsky.social @sanjeedah.bsky.social @freyamills.bsky.social Hanna Eldarwish, Danielle Evans, Fi Green & Jane Wen

'Understanding the "new" disruptive behaviour at live music events: The role of group norms'
@harrymlewis.bsky.social

We used multiple methodologies to understand audiences' experiences of disruptive behaviour, underlying processes, and possible solutions.

Please share.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

At this month's Crowds & Identities @crowdsidentities.bsky.social seminar, expertly convened by @freyamills.bsky.social, Rhea Haddad presents her new work with @drannetempleton.bsky.social on how collective sound-making at live sports events expressed shared identity.

YouTube video by Crowds & Identities Why crowd behaviour matters - for psychology and society

'Why crowd behaviour matters - for psychology and society'

Recording of my Professorial Lecture. Please share.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pBZ...

Does participating in collective action moralize one's attitudes over time, and if so, how?

Happy to share that our paper is now out in JPSP! With Martijn van Zomeren, Roberto González, Ernestine Gordijn, Pia Carozzi, Michal Reifen Tagar, Belén Álvarez, Cristián Frigolett, and Eran Halperin. (1/9)

Construction and contestation of climate activist identities in the comments section of a large UK‐based online newspaper Success of global attempts to limit climate change depends partly upon public support for demands of climate activist groups. We examined the role of social representation and identity processes in s...

This looks very interesting, & relevant to a paper I'm currently working on - I'll take a good look through! In the meantime, if you're interested and open to shameless self promo - here's a related paper myself and V. Vignoles published earlier this year: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Indeed - thanks John!

Cause to deactivate that X account that's hanging around unused: www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

Crowds & Identities early birthday celebration meal, with @sanjeedah.bsky.social @evangelospsych.bsky.social @harrymlewis.bsky.social @alleal.bsky.social

Bleak reading...