About
Matilde Tassinari is a Grant-funded Researcher at the University of Helsinki’s Faculty of Social Sciences, specializing in Social Psychology with a focus on intergroup relations. She holds visiting researcher positions at the University of Tokyo (since 2023) and Aalto University (2021–2021). Her work explores the use of Virtual Reality (VR) to study and reduce prejudice, leveraging neurobiological and social science approaches. Tassinari leads or participates in projects like ERA-VR: Equality through Research and Art in VR (2024–2027) and PREVENT (2020–2024), which investigate intergroup dynamics and bias reduction.
Her research integrates empirical studies, systematic reviews, and experimental VR setups to understand mechanisms of empathy, neural responses to intergroup encounters, and the transfer of VR-based interventions to real-world settings. Recent media coverage highlights her contributions to applying VR as an “Empathy Machine” for addressing prejudice. She actively contributes to academic discourse through peer reviews for journals like Acta Psychologica and Neuropsychologia, and engages in conferences such as Oddfest.
