doc. PhDr. Bc. lva Poláčková Šolcová, Ph.D.

Iva Poláčková Šolcová is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Psychology of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Head of its Prague branch. She studied Humanities at the Faculty of Humanities and Psychology at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. In 2018, she earned her habilitation (Associate Professorship) in Social Psychology at Masaryk University.She lectures in psychology at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, where she also chaired the Research Ethics Committee until 2024.

She has been affiliated with the Czech Academy of Sciences since 2011. Her core research interests include human experience, emotions, and motivation—whether in extreme environments of isolation and confinement such as Antarctica or outer space, in diverse cultural and societal settings, or across different life stages. Her research is often interdisciplinary, encompassing cross-cultural psychology, space psychology, lifespan psychology, and the psychology of affective processes.

She has published approximately 70 articles in peer-reviewed journals, with more than 1,000 citations indexed in the Web of Science. She has led numerous national research projects and served as the national coordinator for several international cross-cultural studies.

Within the Czech Academy of Sciences, she is a member of the College of Science Communicators, the Council for Space Activities, and the AV21 Strategy Programme Space for Humankind.