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Daugavpils University invites doctoral students, academic staff, and all interested parties to attend an online lecture: “The Illusory Nature of Social Relationships: Fundamental Problems of Conceptualization, Study, and Measurement.”.
Event Details:
About the Speaker:
Aleksejs Ruža is a Professor of Psychology at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Daugavpils University. His research interests are primarily related to social cognition, interpersonal relationships, and research methodology. In addition to his academic work, he is also a certified psychologist-supervisor with more than 20 years of practical experience.
About the lecture:
Social relationships are commonly treated as stable, observable, and measurable structures within psychology, sociology, and related disciplines. However, their apparent clarity often conceals deeper conceptual and methodological difficulties. This lecture will examine the illusory nature of social relationships as a research object, highlighting how implicit assumptions about interaction, mutual understanding, and social connectedness shape both theoretical models and empirical measurement practices. It will explore how disciplinary differences in defining relationships influence what researchers identify as “real” social ties and what remains analytically invisible. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives from social psychology, sociology, and philosophy of knowledge, the presentation will demonstrate how measurement tools may capture only partial representations of relational reality while overlooking subjective, symbolic, and situational dimensions of interaction.
Please register by May 5, 2026: https://forms.gle/RYuCstNJnyvtbGHH7
The Zoom access link will be sent to all registered participants on the day of the lecture.
For more information:
Doctoral School
doktoranturasskola@du.lv
