It is with great sadness that we mark the passing of Professor Ivana Marková on 1 December 2024. Ivana was Professor Emerita of the University of Stirling, Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics (UK), Senior Member of Wolfson College Cambridge, Fellow of The British Psychological Society, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and Fellow of the British Academy.
Born in Czechoslovakia in 1938, Ivana experienced first-hand the impact of WWII in Europe and the historical events that were to have a profound impact on her outlook and life. Assigned by the communist party to work as a technician in a chemical plant and not allowed to study full-time, she became an external student at Charles University in Prague, earning her doctorate in 1964. Following the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, she was forced to relocate her young family to England. After postdoctoral positions at the University of Cambridge and the University of London, she was appointed lecturer and then professor at the University of Stirling. From there she went on to become a leading voice in linguistics and psychological science, producing influential work on the epistemology of psychology, social and cultural psychology, dialogicality and linguistics. A leader of social psychology in Europe and beyond, she developed long-standing associations with the Maison des Sciences de L’Homme and the London School of Economics.
Rooted in the Czech linguistic tradition, Ivana was uncompromisingly interdisciplinary in her writings, operating within far-reaching and wide intellectual vistas. She developed the dialogical approach to social psychology and argued for the primacy of social and ethical relationships, viewing relations as an open-ended dialogue, in which respect and responsibility are crucial. She was especially attuned to the tensions that could arise due to contradictory commitments (e.g., to family and an institution). With a deep scholarly foundation in Hegel, Herder, and Bakhtin, she made paradigmatic contributions to the study of language, human awareness, social representations, persuasion and trust.
In her empirical work, Ivana addressed social issues as they emerged: the social representations of AIDS in the 1980s, changing representations of democracy in post-Soviet countries in the 1990s, trust in contemporary institutions in the 2000s, and more recently, the challenges posed by bureaucratisation in public services and universities. In all these contributions, she combined the highest level of scholarship with humility and a sensitivity to the complexities of human life.
Ivana held visiting professorships in many universities, gave keynote addresses in numerous countries, and was an inspirational mentor to generations of social psychologists. Her absence will be sorely felt in academic communities across the globe.
What a devastating loss to a global community of social psychologists. I knew Ivana first as “Markova, 1982”, author of ‘Paradigms, Thought and Language’, an assigned reading to Masters students in the then Department of Social Psychology at LSE. I could feel lights turning on in my mind as I grasped a different and liberating way of thinking. I was lucky in more recent years to get to know her as a person, cherishing her incredible combination of the most brilliant critical intellect and unassuming, humble and generous nature.
Ivana’s writing taught me to think dialogically, to understand the world as fundamentally changing rather than static, and to understand the primacy of others in ourselves and our communication. I simply would not be the scholar I am without Ivana’s influence and inspiration. I am more than grateful for this – I owe who I am to her.
A lighthouse has turned off, but may the rest of us left behind reflect a little bit of her light.
It is very hard to think of Ivana gone. As I read Flora Cornish’s wonderful tribute above, I was reminded again of everything Ivana gave me as a scholar, as a mentor, as an inspirational colleague and as a friend.
I too came to know her first through “Paradigms, Thought and Language’, a foundational book on the epistemology of psychology, a book that came to shape profoundly my own understanding and teaching of psychology. But I think it was ‘The Dialogical Mind: Common sense and ethics (2016)’ that gave me more than any other of her books a sense of the scholar and the woman. Against the individualism and technocratic impetus that mark so much of modern psychology, Ivana drew on her scholarship and vast erudition to demonstrate the primacy of the Self-Other dyad in the making of the human mind and knowledge. Its foundational lesson is to show we are all shaped first and foremost by the presence of Others in us and this so ever fragile and necessary dialogicality is all we have to sustain our human condition and our ethical life. When this goes wrong, the world goes wrong, as her profound analyses of stalinism, nazism, consumerism and bureaucratisation have shown.
Ivana’s teaching about the dialogical mind were to be found in her own mind, which was always in conversation with her heart and those around her, and made her a humane, caring, sensitive and attentive mentor and friend.
She was a blessing in my own life, and I feel so fortunate and grateful that our paths crossed, that I could enjoy her wisdom and guidance and that we became friends. Rest in peace dearest Ivana, you were much loved and a light in our lives.
What terribly sad news. I first got to know Ivana back in 1975 when I began my PhD at the University of Stirling with her as my supervisor. I had arrived in Stirling fresh and innocent in so many ways. I was immediately impressed by her intellectual depth and wonderful personality. We had so many deep discussions and joyful laughs. In those halcyon days she was very interested in attribution theory and person perception which became a focus of my early research. In the 50 years that followed we kept in touch. Although we did not collaborate on any research she remained an inspiration. I am so much more because of her and will continue to grow with the wonderful scholarship she has left us. She was an intellectual giant with such breadth of knowledge and wisdom. The last time I met Ivana we talked and talked so much that I had run to catch my train. I waved goodbye over my shoulder. She still had that girlish laugh. So many wonderful memories.
The loss of Ivana leaves me with a feeling of deep sadness, but also with an immense gratitude for all I was able to learn from her. Meeting her in the late 80s played a crucial role in my approach to psychology and research. Her vision of psychology was not only brilliant, original and incredibly stimulating, it was also a reflection of her as a person: extremely human, with a constant concern for respect and consideration towards others. She defended a psychology that would account for the many and contradictory facets of human beings and would force us to consider ourselves not only as researchers but also as citizens involved in the world. In addition of being a great intellectual, Ivana was also an extremely kind and respectful person, with —it has to be said— a great sense of humour. That’s why I like to remember the malicious smile that would light up her face and, sometimes, go with a no less malicious comment.
Brilliant, modest, kind, inspiring. These are just a few of the adjectives that come spontaneously to mind when describing Ivana. Having met her since the early 2000s as part of international psychosocial research groups on common sense and science, as well as focus groups, and having crossed paths with the international community on social representations on a number of occasions, she will forever remain an inspiring figure through her work, her acute sense of work and reflection, well beyond the consumption of ephemeral relationships of the present, rooted in the history of ideas and the present, political and cultural times. Her ideas will continue to inspire us, and this is the best gift we could give her collectively.
Like Flora and Sandra, my first encounter with Ivana’s writing through Marková (1982). The breadth of her knowledge, the clarity of her thinking, and the precision in her writing have always been a source of great inspiration to me.
Ivana, along with Professor Jaan Valsiner, examined my PhD thesis. Of course, I was terrified at the prospect of facing a viva with my academic heroes! Ivana’s feedback was incisive and exacting, yet delivered with a generosity of spirit that only she was capable of. reflected her genuine commitment to nurturing others’ development. Ivana was an intellectual powerhouse whose scholarship fundamentally shaped my perspectives on the social world and epistemology. A true giant has departed.
In time, I had the privilege of getting to know her personally. She was always generous with her time and full of warmth, love, and affection. I am finding it difficult to imagine that I will not see her ever again.
Rest in peace Ivana – I am going to miss you a lot.
I first met Ivana in the 1980s when I was a speech therapist working with adults with learning disabilities in Stirling with whom she was carrying out research. What an inspiration she was – gradually encouraging me to do my own research. Her intellect and analytic mind taught so much to my practical therapeutic one. She changed my life.
She was also just a wonderful person – kind, humble, generous and with a gentle sense of humour. We had many laughs over the years in Stirling and I will never forget her un-filing system !
She has given an enormous amount to the world of communication and will continue to be an inspiration to many.
Condolences to her daughter and son.
I return to Ivana’s (many) writings time and time again and always get the same sense of inspiration when I do. At the same time, I’m always in awe of how she managed to convey such a range of complex ideas with such clarity and insight.
As others have said above, she combined such a formidable intellectual brilliance with a genuine down-to-earth kindness and generosity of time and spirit. Talking to her was always such a pleasure in so many ways.
She was an extraordinary person, and her legacy is enormous.
It is still difficult to accept this news, and reading the tributes above makes it even harder. Ivana was someone I met during my PhD, whose academic work was incredibly powerful, and the conversations we had were so important in forming my sense of self as a scholar. She was always so encouraging of work that seemed on the ‘fringes’, and gave many of us permission to feel like our research mattered. To be both a brilliant scholar, theorist, thinker, and someone who encouraged confidence in others to strive to be the same, is a quality that is rare to find.
I always refered to Ivana as my ‘academic grandmother’, embodying many of the cultural mannerisms and ways of speaking that I associate with my own grandmother, while be able to engage me in some of the most fascinating conversations about social psychology. I will miss her a lot.
Rest in peace Ivana.
Ivana was both a profound scholar and a generous human being. I had the good fortune of knowing her since my first semester at the University of Cambridge in 2004, where her transformative book ‘Dialogicality and Social Representations’ was a core text on the curriculum. From our very first meeting, I was struck by her humility. In contrast to the prevailing performance culture, she made her incisive intellectual contributions in a clear and unassuming way.
In the years that followed, I met Ivana many times Cambridge and Paris (and later Aalborg). She always greeted me with warmth, hospitality, and a genuine interest in sharing reflections. On my last visit in 2022, I fondly remember having drinks with her at the Anchor on a sunny day in Cambridge. We then strolled along the River Cam, where she pointed out a family of ducks she had been observing for months and had grown attached to. This moment underscored her gentleness and attentiveness to the world—not only in the intellectual realm but also in the simple, everyday joys of life.
Ivana had an extraordinary ability to balance profound scholarly insights with a deeply human connection to people, places, and even the smallest details of nature. Her legacy as a scholar is immense and will continue to profoundly shape my thinking. But above all, it is her kindness, humility, and warmth that I will remember most vividly.
With Ivana’s passing, the Social and Cultural Psychology world has lost a great Dame. She has been massively inspirational, scholarly, uncompromising theoretically, and a great mentor to several generations of young colleagues. Let me add some personal memories to this track.
I remember having met Ivana first time in the mid 1980s; she visited my then University of Berne, where I was an undergraduate student. She had just published her book on paradigms (1982), Hegelian and otherwise, and she was working with Klaus Foppa towards the ‘dynamics of dialogue’ project which during the 1990s resulted in several, now classical books with the German Werner Reimers Stiftung which supported high-octane social psychology seminars [those publications now cost a fortune, even on the 2nd hand market]. It is my great regret, at the time to have entirely missed what Ivana was up to and telling us. Hopelessly naive, I felt this was ‘odd stuff about talking’, and I was drawn to other things, like the psychology of action [not behaviour]. Later in London in the 1990s, Rob Farr introduced us all to Ivana at the LSE. They were friends, and jointly researching the ‘Revolution in Eastern Europe’ and the emerging notions of a ‘democracy of individuals’. Ivana had since been a constant presence at LSE Social Psychology and elsewhere in the world, not least in the international network of social representations research. In the 2000s, Ivana convened a small discussion group in Paris on ‘social influence’ that resulted in a special issue for UNESCO’s journal DIOGENE [2008, 217]. In 2013, we gained her attention as co-founding member for the RICOS group [Reconsidering Common Sense], which on Ivana’s advice we modelled on the German dialogue meetings of the 1990s. We formed a loose group of active researchers from across Europe to discuss ‘common sense’, which we then indeed did at various locations and on various topics: the brain, body, politics, rhetoric, science. This culminated in the book on ‘AI and Common Sense’ in 2024, which contains what might well be one of Ivana’s last writing pieces, reminding us to rediscover Giambattista Vico (1668-1744, Naples] as she did elsewhere, and to conduct psychology as a social and historical science. In recent years, I could not help associating Ivana with Miss Marple, the literary character: an unassuming Lady presence, astute observer, and a sharp mind in action. We will surely miss you, Ivana; may you rest in peace!
Ivana was my colleague from 1988 when I joined Stirling until she retired – and I saw her from time to time after that – lastly at a meeting about the so-called replication crisis in Psychology. “Who decides it’s a crisis?” she asked, “And why?”.
She, and her powerful interests have been an important, necessary counter-balance to the growing dominance of cognition in Psychology. It takes a remarkable person to follow their own radically different research path.
I quickly learned that she was well worth listening to on matters related to her research and well worth ignoring on matters relating to administration (she was HoD for 3 years – 1988-1991).
Stirling would have been a very different, much less interesting place without her. We were very fortunate to have her as colleague.
Ivana was a guiding mentor to me and I will miss her sorely. I vividly remember reading about her distinction between Cartesian and Hegelian paradigms while doing my MSc, and having a proverbial lightbulb moment. It changed the course of my thinking and career. When I met her in person, and got to know her, I learned so much more. She was always scholarly and critical, but also deeply interested and ethical. When she retired from Stirling University, it opened up the staff position, that I stepped into as a young lecturer, seeking to continue her teachings. Since then, I’m truly grateful to have got to know her, and been given direction by her. Whether walking in Cambridge, debating in LSE, or having coffee in Paris, she was always pursuing ideas – and encouraging others to refine and challenge their own thinking. Every dialogue with her was rich, fulfilling, fun, and deeply human. As an internalised voice, as an inner alter, her insights will live on.
I was a Chief Technician in the Psychology Department at Stirling and I met Professor Markova in 1975
I worked in the department for 35 years and had many dealings with her
Although I’m not an academic I fully understood what important work she did
She could be demanding but she was always polite and courteous and appreciated any work I did for her
In the early days I remember her elderly mother preparing food and feeding anyone she met !
At this time of the year Ivana was very thoughtful and always left a bottle of wine on your desk which was always appreciated
I felt very saddened to hear of her passing and will always remember her fondly She will be missed greatly
Many things have been written so far! The sadness is here, the finality of her absence … We grieve for the friend and for the great intellectual she was. Her approach of dialogism, dialogue, and dialogical mind will remain as a major contribution to theory far beyond the frontiers of disciplines. Her time in Paris, the various working groups in which I had the luck to take part with her, were great chances for me and my colleagues. Ivana was one of the most inspiring persons I ever met.
On a lighter note
Ivana came to Stirling when she was working in Paris and proudly announced that she was now a member of the ” Tartan Army”
She had passed a pub in Paris when the Scotland Football team were playing in the World Cup and joined in with the singing and dancing with the Kilted fans!
Ivana was a mentor – she was a fabulous supporter of me as an early career academic. Not all women are quite so supportive of other women and I have tried to follow her great example. Her academic mind was brilliant, and quite beyond me! Instead we would chat and laugh about other things – like learning to dance before she went on a trip to Brazil!
I hold her memory very fondly, and with gratitude.
I arrived at the University of Stirling in 1976 expecting to stay for only one year but completed my degree there. Ivana was always patient and kind and I remember her reaching out to me in my final year to check how I was doing while she technically had no need to do so not being my supervisor or my personal academic tutor but it felt reassuring and supportive. Ivana brought meaning to the theories and concepts of social psychology – she had a capacity to share her insights with students in ways that made the subject area fascinating. As the child of european parents (who had fled Europe) I also found myself having a sense of ‘home’ listening to her speak. I am now back at stirling as an academic and her legacy lives on in the people who followed her not just in the research topic but also building on her supportive and guiding nature. My thoughts to her family.
In her bid to explore the foundations of epistemology, Ivana stood at the helm of a social psychology that offered a path through a dialogical rather than a monological lens. By doing so, our imaginations were opened to consider the interrelationships within and across our chosen subjects in their particular contexts including our own positioning. Once this was understood, one couldn’t ever go back to a monological world. We were changed forever. Her scholarly works, so fastidious in their developing philosophical arguments, were an absolute joy to read and ponder over, opening up new frontiers as to how we might capture, however small a tiny fragment of our newly found knowledge in our empirical work.
As one of my PhD thesis examiners, along with Brady Wagoner, Ivana was kind, supportive and patient, whist I sat mute for the first minutes, quite terrified I would never utter a word again. Yet the conversations quickly flowed between the three of us, and I didn’t want it to end. I had the time of my life. There are so many memories over the ensuing years of meeting up in Aalborg, in Paris, in Cambridge, in London, that exemplified the respect, gratitude and love shown to her by so many others. And the sense that she was having a thoroughly good time. I mourn the loss of someone so dear to us and yet also know we have the capacity to keep her ideas alive through our own work and with one another.
Ivana was a true scholar and her integrity and commitment to carving out a truly dialogical Social Psychology was remarkable.
She gave me my first academic job at Stirling and was a true mentor and friend throughout my time knowing her. I’ll miss her encouragement, her insights and her really understanding me juggling being an academic and a mother. My fondest memories of her are having fun at conferences… sometimes debating ideas and presentations but often escaping and doing a bit of site seeing together, exploring churches and cafes in Montreal, Paris or São Paulo.
Her ability to connect her philosophical insights and her connections with people is rare. Many with miss her. Many will continue to be inspired by her work and ideas. I feel extremely lucky to have known her well.
I was very sad to hear the news about Ivana Markova ‘s passing. Ivana was not only my PhD thesis co-supervisor, she also advised and supported me in my life. She has taught us a lot; amongst which most important was the connection of dialogical psycho-social knowledge to tangible, real life problems.
My condolences to her loved ones.
Rest in peace Ivana.
A brilliant thinker and much loved. Ivana Markova will be greatly missed.