Dr Yunita Faela Nisa

Dr Yunita Faela Nisa is the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Psychology at the State Islamic University Jakarta. She joined the Center for the Study of Islam and Society (PPIM) to research Religious Attitudes in Islamic Religious Education (PAI) Teachers in 2016. In 2017, she was the Coordinator of the PPIM national survey on Religious Attitudes of Students and Teachers in Indonesia. She completed her doctoral degree in Social Psychology in 2015 at Universitas Indonesia with a dissertation on forwarding news online in Indonesia: Narrowcast versus Broadcast. Her research interests are social and education problems and social intervention, psychology on tolerance behaviour and radicalism, and human behaviour in cyberspace. She has received grants, including the International Travel Award for Psychology Students from the American Psychological Association grant to present her dissertation at the 2015 APA Convention in Toronto, Canada;  a Conference Travel Grant from the International Council of Psychology in Yokohama, Japan, in 2016.  In 2017, she received a grant from the Asian Association of Social Psychology (AASP) to attend a Summer Course at Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand. In 2018, she received The Witkin-Okonji Travel Award for participating in the 24th International Congress of Cross-Cultural Psychology in Guelph, Canada. In 2019, she was a research fellow at the Motivated Cognition Laboratory, University of Maryland.

Religious Behaviour and Social Trust Amid Covid-19 Pandemic in Indonesian Students

Research on religion and the Covid-19 pandemic provides an understanding of the important factors for increasing social cohesion in Indonesia. This research explores the impact of Covid-19 on the religious life of students. Following Peter Connoly (1999: 6-7), religion can be defined as ‘beliefs that involve acceptance of a trans-empirical sacred reality, and behaviour intended to enhance one's relationship with that reality’. Following this definition, there are two important components in religion: belief and behaviour. This research will focus on religious behaviour in the midst of the Covid-19 outbreak, including religious rituals intended to draw one closer to God. This study also analyses the trust that students have towards fellow citizens and to certain institutions that have a role in society. These institutions range from the central government to local governments and community leaders at the local level. Currently, data collection is ongoing in 34 provinces in Indonesia and will be analysed in early October 2021.