Rusi Jaspal is the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research & Knowledge Exchange) and a Professor of Psychology at the University of Brighton in the United Kingdom. He is a Chartered Psychologist and a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Rusi Jaspal studied at the University of Cambridge, the University of Surrey, and Royal Holloway, University of London. After his PhD, he completed an ESRC post-doctoral research fellowship at the University of Nottingham. In 2015, Rusi Jaspal was awarded a personal chair in Psychology and Sexual Health at De Montfort University Leicester where he also held a number of senior posts, including that of Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research). He has also held professorships at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland, where he helped set up the Minority Research Profile, and at Nottingham Trent University, UK, where he founded and led the Identity Change Research Group. Professor Jaspal has also served as Social Isolation Advisor to Wandsworth Borough Council, London.

Professor Jaspal's research cuts across the fields of psychology and public health, focussing particularly on social psychological approaches to promoting good psychological and physical health outcomes. He has developed the Health Adversity Risk Model (HARM) to predict the impact of social and psychological stressors and identity threat on health outcomes. Much of his research using the model has focused on HIV prevention, HIV care and mental health. With Professor Dame Glynis Breakwell, Rusi Jaspal has contributed to the development of Identity Process Theory. Additionally, Professor Jaspal has conducted extensive research into aspects of psychological wellbeing among gay men, the management of identities in conflict, national identity, prejudice and discrimination, public understanding of science, technology and medicine and the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rusi Jaspal is the author or editor of 6 books, and has written over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and reports for the Department of Health. He supervises and examines PhD students in his areas of expertise.

As a passionate advocate for knowledge exchange, he has sat on numerous national and international committees relating to his research. He was on the Working Group that produced the UK’s first clinical recommendations for integrated sexual health services for trans, including non-binary people, in 2018. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Rusi Jaspal was appointed Social Isolation Advisor to Wandsworth Borough Council, London, and has previously been a trustee of the LGBT Foundation, Saving Lives (an HIV charity in the West Midlands), Leicestershire AIDS Support Service (LASS), Stonewall Housing, the Phoenix Cinema in Leicester, and a member of the Medical Board of NAZ Project London (a sexual health charity focusing on ethnic minority communities in the UK). He was a member of the Advisory Group of the National HIV Commission, as well as that of HIV Prevention England, and that of the Terrency Higgins Trust. He serves on many journal editorial boards, including HIV Medicine; Mental Health, Religion and Culture; the American Journal of Sexuality Education; Israel Affairs; the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism; the British Journal of Social Psychology; and the Journal of Social and Political Psychology.

Professor Jaspal is interested in supervising students in the following areas: sexual health/ HIV; identity construction & management (especially in relation to sexuality, ethnicity and religion); prejudice & intergroup relations; mental health; and wellbeing in marginalised groups in societies.