Our academic staff

Professor Christopher Barry

Professor, Department of Psychology

Research interests: The cognitive psychology (and neuropsychology) of aspects of language production Lexical selection in spoken word production (eg, picture naming, reading aloud) Stroop and picture-word interference tasks Bilingual word production and language control Written and typed word production

Dr Kathryn Buchanan

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Improving subjective well-being through the identification of happiness-enhancing behaviours or activities; Promoting the uptake of eco-friendly behaviours; The capabilities of digital technologies to change behaviour

Dr Alasdair Clarke

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Dr Geoff Cole

Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Cognitive neuropsychology; Visual cognition; Comparative psychology; Colour vision

Dr Nicholas Cooper

Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Transcranial magnetic simulation (TMS); Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS); Mirror neurons; Stress & Ageing

Dr Philip Cozzolino

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Mortality awareness; The psychology of liberty; Perceptions of, and reactions to, (in)equality and (un)fairness; The formation and maintenance of trust and helping in society

Dr Rael Dawtry

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Social cognition; political psychology; social comparison; relative deprivation; inequality; socioecological psychology; applied social psychology; just-world theory; immanent justice reasoning; judgment and decision making. I have a particular interest in how socioecological factors (e.g., economic structure, culture, institutions) shape political cognition, beliefs and attitudes.

Dr Carina De Klerk

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: imitation; facial mimicry; action processing; development of the mirror neuron system;

Dr Kevin Dent

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Visual cognition; Understanding basic mechanisms of visuo-spatial attention; Visuo-spatial short-term memory; The effects of experience on object and word processing

Professor Madeline Eacott

Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education) and Professor (R), Department of Psychology

Dr Maria Filippetti

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: The development of body awareness; Tactile interactions; Development of interoception

Dr Tom Foulsham

Reader, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Visual cognition; Perception of pictures and videos; Eye movements; Cognitive neuropsychology

Dr Nicolas Geeraert

Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Stress-trajectories in acculturation; Cross-cultural differences in social cognition; Social perception and social cognition

Dr Helge Gillmeister

Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Visual body representations and effects of body image eating and body dysmorphic disorders; Somatosensory processes, multisensory processes involving somatosensation; Sensorimotor learning, neural plasticity, integration of external objects/tools into the body schema; Mirror touch, action representation, and social cognition

Dr Eva Gutierrez

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Cognitive psychology of language; Reading; Deafness; Hearing impairment; Atypical language development; Sign Language processing; Psycholinguistics; Experimental Psychology; Deafness; Sign Language; Altered Language Experience; Atypical Language Development; Reading; Literacy; Reading Acquisition; Visual Word processing; Orthographic Processing; Phonological Processing; Electrophysiology; Event Related Potentials; Brain Lateralization for Language; Development of brain lateralisation

Dr Paul Hanel

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Professor Rick Hanley

Professor, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Disorders of reading, writing, memory, and face processing; Learning to read in different writing systems; Speech production; Tip-of-the-tongue states; Effects of irrelevant speech on memory

Professor Paul Hibbard

Head of Department - Professor, Department of Psychology

Research interests: binocular vision; image statistics; visual discomfort

Dr Anna Hughes

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Dr Gethin Hughes

Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Sense of Agency; Metacognition; Action Understanding; Multisensory Integration

Dr Marie Juanchich

Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Risk communication; Gender equality

Dr Steffan Kennett

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Multisensory attention and perception; Tactile effects on visual spatial attention; Viewing the skin changing tactile judgements; Changes in body posture modifying spatial attention; Methods ERPs, EOG, TMS, Reaction time

Dr Megan Klabunde

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Interoception; Neurodevelopment; Social Cognition; Human Attachment; Emotion; fNIRS; fMRI

Dr Sebastian Korb

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Embodiment in facial emotion recognition

Dr Veronica Lamarche

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Trust and interdependence; Motivated cognition and relationship maintenance; Risk, vulnerability and uncertainty regulation; Romantic relationships

Dr Matteo Lisi

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Dr Dawn Liu Xiaodan

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Dr Vanessa Loaiza

Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: working memory; cognitive ageing; long-term memory; executive functioning; conscious recollection; cognitive modelling

Dr Nikhila Mahadevan

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Dr Keith May

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: My work investigates the processing performed by the human visual system. My research mainly falls into the following areas: perceptual encoding, edge processing, visual grouping, visual attention, and coding efficiency. I also work on face perception and memory.;

Dr Rick O'Gorman

Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Evolutionary psychology; Pro-social behaviour; Social norms; Leadership and group functioning; Intergroup conflict; Computer modelling of social phenomenon; Applications of social cognition techniques to evolutionary questions; Biosocial psychology

Professor Sheina Orbell

Professor, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Intention-behaviour relation; Self-regulation; Social psychology of volition and volitional strategies in behavioural change; Motivational models of health-related behaviour; Social psychology of sexual health; Social-cognitive accounts of motivation and health-related behaviour; Cervical screening; Colorectal cancer screening

Professor Silke Paulmann

Professor, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Social language processing in normal and special populations (e.g., bilinguals, brain damaged, aging); Emotional and attitudinal language processing across different cultures; Motivational prosody processing; Event-related brain potentials

Professor Reinhard Pekrun

Professor, Department of Psychology

Dr Giulia Poerio

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Dr Gerulf Rieger

Reader, Department of Psychology

Research interests: My work focuses on sexual orientation: how it is organized, how it develops, and how it affects a persons life. I use a diversity of methodologies, including self-report, behavioural observations, physiological activity and neurological correlates, and employ an array of quantitative skills in order to pursue my research. I use videos and photos from childhood to examine whether masculine and feminine behaviours during early development predict adult sexual orientation. I also investigate the social impact of these signals. I have used large data sets of family members to investigate potential evolutionary reasons for sexual orientation. In another line of research, I study the association of sexual orientation with physiological sexual arousal in order to illuminate sex differences in sexual response. With a different methodology, pupil dilation, I am currently conducting research that will aid in explaining how early sex and sexual orientation differences in sexual attraction emerge. These studies have broad relevance for understanding how people perceive themselves and others, for the consequences of these perceptions, and for the development of differences between and within the sexes.

Dr Silvia Rigato

Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Face and emotion processing in infancy.; The development of body representation and tactile localisation.; The development of the neural basis of shared touch.; Perinatal mental health.

Dr Maxwell Roberts

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Inductive and deductive reasoning; Individual differences in reasoning strategies; The cognitive psychology of intelligence; Spatial reasoning and imagery; The development of expertise

Dr Tracy Robinson

Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: The role of emotion and anxiety in attentional biases

Dr Jonathan Rolison

Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: A major focus of my research is risk taking behaviours across adulthood. My research in this area is aimed at explaining why people become more cautious in older age and whether age changes in risk taking behaviours are beneficial or harmful. There are both theoretical and applied aspects to my work in this field. As an applied focus, I investigate the risks faced by young and elderly drivers with a view to understanding whether drivers of these ages are a danger to themselves and to other road users. Through my applied work, I have introduced new statistical tools for the assessment of driver crash risk.; A second theme in my research explores perception and communication of health risks and health-related decision making. One of my aims in this area is to develop methods for overcoming barriers to effective risk communication. For example, my recent work has shown that maths anxiety impedes understanding of numerical health risks, but that some of the negative effects of maths anxiety can be alleviated with graphical presentation aids.

Professor Riccardo Russo

Professor, Department of Psychology

Dr Gillian Sandstrom

Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Minimal social interactions; Difficult conversations

Dr Alex Sel

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Dr Andrew Simpson

Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: The emergence of inhibitory control in children. Inhibitory control is the capacity to regulate our thoughts, behaviour and emotions, and so take charge of our own lives.

Dr Miroslav Sirota

Reader, Department of Psychology

Research interests: In my research, I am trying to understand how people estimate, judge, reason and make decisions in situations of uncertainty and risk, how people perform these processes on their own and in the presence of the others, and how people perform these processes in the lab and in the wild.; My basic research interests include perceptions of verbal probabilities, statistical reasoning, and intuitive and deliberative processing. My applied research interests include uncertainty and risk communication (e.g., climate change communication, communication between patients and doctors), and diagnostic and management decision-making of doctors.

Professor Gijsbert Stoet

Professor, Department of Psychology

Research interests: I have a background in psychology, education, and neuroscience. My current work focuses mainly on individual differences in cognitive abilities and attitudes, including in educational achievement and attitudes.

Dr Elia Valentini

Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: The study of brain responses during tonic pain and other unpleasant prolonged sensory stimulation; Sensory expectation and prediction in the brain; Existential threats. How symbolic threats can alter our behaviour and brain activity

Dr Loes Van Dam

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: My main research areas are visual perception, visuomotor performance and multi-sensory perception and action. In other words, I am interested in how the human brain transforms the sensory information it receives into adequate perceptual interpretations and goal-oriented behavior. I use psychophysical and behavioral methods in addition to ideal-observer modelling to investigate these topics.

Dr Wijnand Van Tilburg

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Dr Pascal Vrticka

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Professor Geoffrey Ward

Professor, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Similarities and differences between different memory tasks, especially immediate serial recall and free recall; General properties of episodic memory; Memory structures and processes; The use of technology to enhance human memory

Dr Motonori Yamaguchi

Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Cognitive Control; Visual Attention; Skill Acquisition; Cognition & Emotion; Implicit Biases; Computational Modelling of Human Cognition

Dr Bettina Zengel

Lecturer, Department of Psychology

Peter Gooding

Graduate Laboratory Assistant, Department of Psychology

Postgraduate Research Student, Department of Psychology

Senior Research Officer, Department of Psychology

Dr Caitlin Kelly

Senior Research Officer, Department of Psychology

Nikki Kipling

Research Assistant, Department of Psychology

Dr Steven Samuel

Senior Research Officer, Department of Psychology

Abigail Webb

Senior Research Officer, Department of Psychology

Dr Charlotte Clarke

Visiting Fellow, Department of Psychology

Professor Sandra Dudley

External Examiner (Research), External Examiners - School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CSEE)

Visiting Fellow, External Examiners - School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CSEE)

Visiting Fellow, Department of Psychology

Dr Bundy Mackintosh

Visiting Fellow, Department of Psychology

Visiting Fellow, School of Health and Social Care

Dr Manuela Stets

Visiting Fellow, Department of Psychology

Professor Deborah Roberson

Emeritus Professor, Department of Psychology

Research interests: The relationship between language and thought; The development of categorization in children; Categorization of colors, face identity and facial expressions; Categorical perception

Professor Arnold Wilkins

Emeritus Professor, Department of Psychology

Research interests: Visual perception, including colour vision and the design of ophthalmic tints; Use of ophthalmic tints in autism and multiple sclerosis; The response of the brain to visual stimuli measured using near infrared spectroscopy; Lighting and its biological effects; Visual dysfunction in migraine; Photosensitive epilepsy and migraine; Reading disorders and the design of text for children; Spectral and chromatic analysis of uncomfortable images