The Besample Dissertation Grant: 2025-2026 Cohort

(N=3,000)

Empowering The Best Multi-Country Doctoral Research Projects in 2026

We created this grant to support early-career researchers who are pushing behavioral science beyond the West. Read how and why we started it.

Join Besample

The 2026 competition unfolds in two stages: first, 25 finalists receive free pilot data collection (N = 500) through Besample for their dissertation prospectus or pre-defense. These grantees present their preliminary results in an online pitch contest. Three winners receive full funding for their dissertation studies, including translations, data collection support, and specific demographic targeting.Applications are now closed. Meet the winners and finalists below.

Announcing the Final Winners
of the 2025–2026 Besample Dissertation Grant

Besample selected 30 early-career researchers to conduct pilot studies across 16 non-Western countries. Following six months of research, the pilot-stage grantees presented their findings in the final competition before an academic jury and the broader Besample community.

The three recipients of the full Besample Dissertation Grant were selected through a two-round voting process by a jury of leading behavioral researchers.

In addition to the three main Dissertation Grants, two finalists received special recognition through the Audience Choice Award and Besample Choice Award.

Samantha Reisman

Main Dissertation Grant

Isabella C. Montini

Main Dissertation Grant

Amanda Royka

Main Dissertation Grant

Wicia Fang

Audience Choice Award

Arsen Martyshchuk

Besample Choice Award

Meet Our Pilot Stage Finalists

We received over 100 submissions, and selecting just 25 pilot-stage winners was not easy. Many strong proposals could not be accommodated.

The grantees below were selected through a two-stage review process, which included an initial evaluation followed by methodological clarifications where needed. Applications were assessed based on idea novelty, theoretical grounding, potential contribution to the field, research rigor, alignment with Besample's mission to research beyond the West, and feasibility within Besample's research infrastructure.

Anisha Singh

M.S., Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, London School of Economics, UK

How do gender norms and cultural context shape employees’ use of workplace mental health resources? Can peer testimonials by women vs. men shift norms and increase uptake?

Research advisor:

Laura M Giurge

Target countries:

Yuqing Shi

M.S., Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Do people in more emotionally expressive cultures rely more on subtle happy-looking cues in neutral faces when judging a stranger’s trustworthiness, and why?

Research advisor:

DongWon Oh

Target countries:

Amanda Royka

M.S., Department of Psychology, Yale University, USA

Do languages worldwide share “mentalistic interjections” (e.g., oops, ouch) that intentionally broadcast emotions and mental states? Are these more conserved than non-mentalistic interjections (e.g., cheers, shhh)?

Research advisor:

Julian Jara-Ettinger

Target countries:

Arsen Martyshchuk

M.P.A., Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

How do wartime conditions in Kyiv - alerts, curfews, infrastructure damage, and perceived risk - reshape transit use, reliability expectations, and everyday travel behavior?

Research advisor:

Matthew Palm

Target countries:

Isabella C. Montini

M.S., Department of Political Science, University of California at Berkeley, USA

How do residents in Brazil’s fragmented- authority urban peripheries decide when, how, and to whom to make political claims, and how does authority competition shape these strategies?

Research advisor:

Alison Post

Target countries:

Senna Singh

M.S., Ashoka University, India

How does chronic childhood family violence shape young Indian adults’ well‑being and self/relational functioning, and, via these, their later revictimization and perpetration?

Research advisor:

Simantini Ghosh

Target countries:

Olena Vitkovska

M.S., Department (Faculty) of Psychology, University of Vienna, Austria

Can a brief online war‑experience‑reframing intervention boost Ukrainian adults’ trauma‑coping self‑efficacy and flourishing during war-related psychological distress?

Research advisor:

Veronika Job

Target countries:

Jonathan Lee

M.Phil., Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Do speech hesitations like “um” and “uh” carry the same meaning globally, or are they culturally shaped? How do Japanese listeners perceive and judge them across languages?

Research advisor:

Anna Papafragou

Target countries:

Nina Rodriguez

M.A., Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Understanding silent treatment in close relationships: is it a universal, low-cost bargaining signal that communicates dissatisfaction and grievance when direct confrontation is too costly?

Research advisor:

Jaimie Arona Krems

Target countries:

Dan-Mircea Mirea

M.S., Department of Psychology, Princeton University, USA

Do depressive symptoms and socio-cognitive decision biases (social negativity/uncertainty, effort sensitivity, delay discounting) predict cross-cultural preferences for AI vs human socio-emotional support?

Research advisor:

Yael Niv

Target countries:

Caitlan Fealing

B.A., Institute for Strategy & Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

What motivates civilians, especially frontline residents, to film and share conflict videos online (“civilian witnessing”), and what response (justice, recognition, etc.) do they seek from global audiences?

Research advisors:

Daniel Silverman Baruch Fischhoff

Target countries:

Wicia Fang

M.S., Department of Psychology, Cornell University, USA

How do cultural contexts shape everyday status judgments? Do laypeople spontaneously use economic, social, or context-specific indicators in making these judgments and, if so, how?

Research advisor:

Vivian Zayas

Target countries:

Carla Garcia

B.A., Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

How does the framing of protestors' grievances foster support and solidarity for social movements? Survey experiment evidence from Argentina's Student Movement.

Research advisor:

F. Daniel Hidalgo

Target countries:

Ovgun Ses

M.S. Department of Psychology, University of Essex, UK

Does perceiving a close other as habitually suppressing emotion predict higher pain via reduced authenticity, lower support, and greater strain across cultures?

Research advisor:

Veronica Lamarche

Target countries:

Burak Kazim Yilmaz

M.A., Department of Political Science, Emory University, USA

How does the introduction of counterinsurgency checkpoints affect civilians’ perceptions of security, economic well-being, and trust in government institutions?

Research advisor:

Danielle F. Jung

Target countries:

Dana Kulzhabayeva

B.A.., Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada

When does rigidity harm vs help goal pursuit and wellbeing across cultures, and through what resource and threat–challenge processes does this occur?

Research advisor:

Norman Farb

Target countries:

Manali Pathare

M.A., Department of Psychology, New Mexico State University, USA

Does short-term cultural rule exposure (individualism–collectivism; horizontal–vertical) flexibly shift adult theory of mind? How do fluid intelligence and attention shape these effects?

Research advisor:

Andrew R.A Conway

Target countries:

Faustine Corbani

M.A., Department of Psychology, Princeton University, USA

Do expansive spontaneous thought dynamics function to support emotional recovery from negative affect, and are these dynamics conserved across cultures even as thought content varies?

Research advisor:

Diana Tamir

Target countries:

AnnaLise Hoopes

Ed.M.., School of Education and Information, University of California Los Angeles, USA

Does online empathy plus self-compassion training reduce ethnocentrism and increase positive attitudes, support intentions, and donations toward immigrants more than either alone?

Research advisor:

Carlos Alberto Torres

Target countries:

Irein Thomas

M.A., Department of Psychology, The University of British Columbia, Canada

Is the “entrepreneurial self” more prevalent in Western than non‑Western societies, and does endorsing this self-concept predict similarly ambivalent well‑being across cultures?

Research advisor:

Kristin Laurin

Target countries:

Zahrah Alwi Alkaff

M.S., Department of Health and Sport Sciences, Technical University of Munich (TUM) & TUMCREATE, Germany

How do light‑exposure behaviours and constraints vary across cultures and climates, and how can these differences guide global adaptation of the LightUP/LightSPAN intervention?

Research advisor:

Manuel Spitschan

Target countries:

Marcus Trenfield

M.S., Department of Psychology, Boston College, USA

How do different relationship, agreement, and harm features shape perceived moral obligation, and how does the weight of these features vary across cultural contexts?

Research advisor:

Liane Young

Target countries:

Samantha Reisman

M.S., Department of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, USA

How do adults across cultures emotionally experience and interpret unfair (stingy vs generous) resource allocations, and how do these emotional responses shape cross-cultural fairness norms?

Research advisor:

Julia A Marshall

Target countries:

Nivedita Jhunjhunwala

M.A., Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin, USA

What influences public opinion about wartime violations in foreign audiences? How do factors like violation type, perpetrating country, and legal framing shape condemnation?

Research advisor:

Terrence Chapman

Target countries:

Tyler Salley

M.S., Experimental Psychology & UCL School of Management, University College London, UK

Do ambiguous political cues from a highly interdependent coworker lead employees to seek or avoid political-identity information, and change how much they share knowledge at work?

Research advisor:

Felix Danbold

Target countries:

Special Awardees

Additional Pilot Grantees

Applicants whose submissions ranked among the strongest. They are awarded in addition to the main 25 finalists, because, following initial evaluation, changes to country availability affected the feasibility of their original proposals.

Kristopher Nichols

M.A., Department of Psychology, Princeton University, USA

Social learning as a stabilizer of “concept drift”: does exposure to others’ judgments curb prevalence‑induced boundary shifts in tight vs. loose cultures?

Research advisor:

Elke Weber

Target countries:

Irene Teulings

M.S., PROMENTA Research Center, University of Oslo, Norway

Do global life satisfaction items (e.g., SWLS, Cantril) validly reflect gaps between current and ideal wellbeing across domains, and are their bias patterns stable across countries?

Research advisors:

Espen Røysamb Joar Vittersø Ragnhild Bang Nes Ludvig Daae Bjørndal

Target countries:

Raghav Raghunathan

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Development Economics, Wageningen University & Research

How does stress compress planning and memory horizons, and when does this cognitive truncation shape risk-taking and economic persistence?

Research advisor:

Francesco Cecchi

Target countries:

Independent Awardees

Applicants whose submissions ranked among the strongest. They are awarded outside the main list of 25 finalists due to advising relationships with Besample advisors or early adopters. This separate award process is intended to avoid potential conflicts of interest and to ensure fairness and independence in the main competition.

Paul McKee

M.S., Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, USA

Do people across cultures see AI as having core moral motives (Approach Good, Avoid Bad, Avoid Good, Approach Bad), and how do these attributions shape their trust in AI systems?

Research advisor:

Walter Sinnot-Armstrong

Target countries:

Kara Findlay

M.S., Department of Psychology, Florida State University, USA

Do attachment, neuroticism, and stress shape bidirectional links between sexual and relationship satisfaction over time in partnered adults across WEIRD and non-WEIRD cultures?

Research advisor:

Andrea Meltzer

Target countries:

Krystina Boyd-Frenkel

Department of Psychological Science, University of California, Irvine, USA

How do distinct forms of childhood environmental unpredictability (resource vs. social) differentially shape psychological outcomes in adulthood?

Research advisor:

Oliver Sng

Target countries:

Join Besample

The Besample Dissertation Grant: 2025-2026 Cohort

Announcing the Final Winnersof the 2025–2026 Besample Dissertation Grant

Samantha Reisman

Isabella C. Montini

Amanda Royka

Wicia Fang

Arsen Martyshchuk

Meet Our Pilot Stage Finalists

Senna Singh

Manali Pathare

Special Awardees

Additional Pilot Grantees

Independent Awardees

Paul McKee

Kara Findlay

Krystina Boyd-Frenkel

Announcing the Final Winners
of the 2025–2026 Besample Dissertation Grant