Profile

Daniela Hekiert, Ph.D. is a psychologist. She is interested in the application of new technologies, such as extended and virtual reality (XR and VR) in cross-cultural and social psychology studies.

Since 2016, she has been collaborating with the AGH University of Science and Technology (AGH UST) in Kraków on emotional vocalization, and since 2018, on projects combining immersive technology and psychological research. Currently, together with researchers from AGH UST, she is developing a VR tool for practicing public speaking and improving voice emission – “glosso I/R”.

She is a recipient of research grants, such as “Miniatura” (a funding scheme supporting young researchers) provided by the National Science Centre (NCN) as well as “Innovation Incubator” and “Regional Initiative of Excellence (RID)” provided by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, which allowed her to develop an idea concerning inducement of ethno-cultural empathy in a VR environment.

As part of her post-doctoral work, she participated in the research project “CEEYouth: The comparative study of Poles and Lithuanians in the context of Brexit” carried out by the Youth Research Center at SWPS University. She was a research fellow at the Social Interaction Laboratory and Culture and Emotion Research Laboratory in San Francisco State University, United States as well as the Center for Cross-Cultural Research, Department of Psychology, at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

At SWPS University she teaches classes in extended reality (XR) in psychological research, cultural determinants of human behavior, introduction to social psychology, and critical analysis of psychological texts.