George Gaskell is a British Emeritus Professor of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
[2] Formerly Director of the Methodology Institute, which he established with Colm O’Muircheartaigh, he was Pro-director for Planning and Resources and a member of the LSE Council and Court of Governors.
George Gaskell graduated from University College London in 1969, and completed his PhD in social psychology under the supervision of Professor Rob Farr in 1973.
He joined the Institute of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics in 1971.
George Gaskell’s research interests fall under the rubric of societal psychology, an approach he developed with the late Hilde Himmelweit, which suggests that a neglected focus in social psychology is the study of social phenomena and cultural forces that both shape, and in turn are shaped by, people's outlooks and actions.
Past research projects include the study of energy use and conservation, the crowd in contemporary Britain, youth and unemployment, and social and cognitive aspects of survey methodology.
George Gaskell is well known for developing the toblerone model of social representations with Martin Bauer, for his edited handbook with Martin Bauer, Qualitative Researching with Text, Image and Sound: A Practical Handbook (2000), which provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to a broad range of research methods with the objective of clarifying procedures, good practice and public accountability – now translated into Portuguese, Hebrew and Chinese.
Since 1996 he has coordinated the series of Eurobarometer surveys on ‘Biotechnology and the Life Sciences’ for DG Research.
Aldershot: Avebury WZB Monnier, E., Gaskell, G., Ester, P., Joerges, B., LaPillone, C.J.H., Midden, C., and Puiseux, L. (Eds).
Energy efficiency in low income households: An evaluation of local insulation projects.
Ester, P., Gaskell, G., Joerges, B., Midden, C., de Vries, T., and van Raaij, W. (Eds) (1984).
Selected articles and chapters post 1994 Gaskell, G., Allum, N., Wagner, W., Kronberger, N., Torgensen, H., and Bardes, J.
Seeds, food and trade wars: Public opinion and policy responses in the US and Europe.
Individual and group interviewing, pp 38–56, in Bauer M and G Gaskell (eds) Qualitative researching with text, image and sound.
Towards public accountability: Beyond sampling, reliability and validity, pp336–350, In Bauer M & G Gaskell (eds) Qualitative researching with text, image and sound.
Quantity, quality and knowledge interests: Avoiding confusions, pp3–18, in Bauer M & G Gaskell (eds) Qualitative researching with text, image and sound.
Industrial and post-industrial public understanding of science, in: Dierkes M and C von Grote (eds) Between understanding and trust: the public, science and technology, Reading, Harwood, Academics Publisher.
Worlds apart: The reception of GM foods in the United States and Europe.
In Durant, J., Bauer, M. and Gaskell, G. (eds) Biotechnology in the public sphere: a European source book.
and Gaskell, G. (eds) Biotechnology in the public sphere: a European source book.
and Gaskell, G. (eds) Biotechnology in the public sphere: a European source book.
(eds) Biotechnology in the public sphere: a European source book.
Flashbulb memory assumptions: Using national surveys to explore cognitive phenomena.
Temporal estimation of major news events: Re-examining the accessibility principle.
Gaskell, G and Wright, D (1997) Group differences for memory of a political event.
Pennebaker, D. Paez and D. Rime (eds) Collective memory of political events: Social psychological perspectives.
Weighing anchors:verbal and numeric labels for response scales.
Context effects in the measurement of attitudes: A comparison of the consistency and framing explanations.
Community care for people with challenging behaviours and mild learning disability.
An economic analysis of the resettlement of people with mild learning disabilities and challenging behaviour.