Doctoral researchers Malin Ekelund and Obed Appiah, together with Psych-AID principal investigator Jan Antfolk, participated in the (Re-)Constructing Credibility in Refugee Status Determination Workshop at the University of Copenhagen. The two-day event, held from 23-24 October 2025, was hosted by the MOBILE-Center of Excellence for Global Mobility Law. The well-structured program was successfully organized by PhD fellows from the MOBILE network, Asta S. Stage Jarlner and Maya Ellen Hertz. It brought together scholars from diverse disciplines, including law, psychology, linguistics, sociology, and other and from different countries such as Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia, Canada, the UK, and India.
The workshop aimed to foster discussion on research related to credibility assessment in the asylum context and to clarify what researchers mean when they refer to credibility. Several researchers presented different research papers for feedback. From the Psych-AID team, Malin shared qualitative findings from her experiment on credibility assessment, revealing that individuals often reason differently when evaluating the same evidence. Obed presented a research plan focused on predicting credibility and asylum decisions based on credibility indicators as well as examining how asylum officials consider alternative explanations in their decision-making. Prof. Amina Menon and Dr Zoe Given-Wilson also presented their collaborative work with Dr Jenny Skrifvars, a Postdoctoral researcher from the Psych-AID, exploring how the Méndez Principles can be applied in the asylum context to improve effective interviewing. Articles resulting from the workshop will be published in a special journal issue.
