Life Fellows

Kaj Björkqvist received his Ph.D. in Psychology in 1986. He is Professor Emeritus of Developmental Psychology at Åbo Akademi University (Active Professor between 1992-2020). He is former President of the International Society for Research on Aggression (ISRA). He has served in various positions at his university, such as Department Head (1992-2011), and Faculty Dean (1995-1998 and 2005-2009). He established the Peace, Mediation, and Conflict Research programme at Åbo Akademi University in 2012. His research has focused on human aggression, in particular sex differences in aggression, but also on school and workplace bullying, conflict resolution, intimate partner aggression, physical punishment, revictimisation, media violence, and cross-cultural comparisons. He has published 13 books and approximately 140 scientific articles and book chapters. Besides in English, his work has also been published in Japanese, German, Italian, Finnish, and Swedish. He was awarded the White Rose of Finland in 2016.

John F. Knutson completed a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Washington State University and a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Oregon Medical School. He is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, The University of Iowa, where he received the Regents Award for Faculty Excellence in 1999. His early research focused on the role of developmental experiences in aggression in nonhuman subjects. That research, coupled with his clinical experiences, caused him to develop research initiatives on child maltreatment, with a focus on the impact of punitive childhood experiences on later behavior. Over several decades he investigated physical abuse, sexual abuse, supervisory and care neglect, and exposure to intimate partner violence, as well as the putative link between childhood disabilities and maltreatment. An advocate of multimethod/multisource strategies for construct development, his work incorporated analog methods, direct observation, laboratory tasks, as well as standardized instruments. He has published over 100 articles in scholarly journals and book chapters. An active member of the International Society for Research on Aggression for over 4 decades, he has been elected Treasurer, Executive Secretary, and President.

Karin Österman, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology at Åbo Akademi University, Vasa, Finland, and Adjunct Professor (Docent) of Social Psychology at Helsinki University. She is the director of the Master’s Degree Programme in Peace, Mediation, and Conflict Research at Åbo Akademi University. Her research includes studies on the physical punishment of children, child abuse, domestic aggression, aggression in the school context, revictimisation, and conflict resolution. She is a Fellow of the International Society for Research on Aggression (ISRA) since 1994 and served as an Executive Council Member of ISRA from 2010−2021. She was one of two organisers of the XVI World Meeting in Santorini, Greece, 2004, Åbo Akademi University. She has also been a member of the scientific programme committees of the XXIII World Meeting in Paris, France, 2018, Université Paris Descartes, and the XXVI World Meeting in Ottawa, Canada, 2022, University of Ottawa.

After earning a BS in physics, Mike Potegal’s research career began at MIT where his thesis project showed a role for the caudate nucleus in egocentric spatial orientation. Egocentric orientation could logically involve the integration of vestibular input into measures of distance and direction; Mike’s post-doc work demonstrated such input to the caudate. This line of inquiry has recently identified anomalies in vestibular “velocity storage” that may account for the life-long balance problems defining a clinical condition that occupational therapists call “gravitational insecurity.” The other line of Mike’s research also began at MIT, where a fuzzy interest in emotion resolved into questions about how internal motivational mechanisms control overt angry and aggressive behaviors. In the animal behavior branch of this research, he found that the rodent medial amygdala was a locus for aggressive arousal and suggested that short-term synaptic potentiation might be a mechanism for its escalation. This hypothesis was confirmed, only 24 years later. After retraining in clinical psychology, the human behavior branch of aggressive motivation research led Mike to study children’s tantrums and the tantrum Anger-Distress Model, which received some media attention. He is currently combining the two branches to propose that human proactive aggression is functionally like offense in other animals, sharing behavioral characteristics and neural circuitry. Mike has published more than 90 articles and books on these topics. These activities led to his involvement with ISRA, where he greatly enjoyed organizing and chairing its New Investigators Program from 2010-2018, and serving as its president from 2016-2018.