Like Lonely Hearts, but brainier!
It can be useful to make contact with others in your field, especially at the start of your postgraduate studies, to develop ideas or network. If you have a problem on anything from research methodologies to statistics, you can describe you problem here, and request advice from others who may be able to help you.
If you would like others to contact you about your research ideas, projects or problems, please submit approx 200-300 words including your contact details and an outline of your research interests, by emailing commsofficer@psypag.co.uk.
We have included the research interests of some of our committee to
get you started, or you can use the search function to look for keywords.
Andrew Clements
Psychology of Sexualities Section Representative
University of Bedfordshire
E-mail: andrew.clements@beds.ac.uk
I am in the second year of my Ph.D. programme. I am looking at the
role of commitment in students training for vocations such as nursing
and social work. Although much of the commitment field is conducted
using quantitative methodology, ecological issues have necessitated
that I conduct qualitative research. I am therefore taking the
opportunity to pursue my area of interest inductively. I am also
interested in issues relating to organization and professional
cultures, issues relating to roles and identities in organizations,
and bringing a critical eye to organizational/ occupational
psychology.
Robin Kramer
Psychobiology Section Representative
Bangor University
E-mail: psp837@bangor.ac.uk
My Ph.D. research falls within evolutionary psychology, and explores
the nature of signalling. More specifically, I am investigating what
information we signal to others from our faces and the way that we
move. I have been focussing on signals of personality and health in
particular, and use static neutral images of the face (both individual
and composite) along with point light walkers to explore whether we
can accurately perceive traits like extraversion from these minimal
stimuli.
Josie Booth
PsyPAG Treasurer
University of Strathclyde
Email: josephine.n.booth@strath.ac.uk
I am in the final year of my Ph.D. which is investigating the role of
executive functions in children’s reading ability. In particular I am
focussing on children who have difficulties with reading and who may
also have comorbid disorders. My research interests span all aspects
of developmental psychology and also language and communication.
Furthermore, I have a strong interest in Quantitative methods and
Psychometric testing.
Daniel Zahra
PsyPAG Member
University of Plymouth
Email: daniel.zahra@plymouth.ac.uk
I’m just starting the final year of my PhD investigating how emotions affect a reasoning, but am also currently involved in with an fMRI study at Plymouth looking at information integration in Autism, a study looking at online addiction and disclosure, and I am working with colleagues at Bristol and UWE investigating emotional experience in a student population (more details at http://daniel-zahra.webs.com/). However, I’m also interested in more philosophy-based topics, neuropsychology, statistics, and emotional disorders, and would love to collaborate on work in any of these areas if anyone shares my interests.
Fiona Essig
London & Home Counties Branch representative
Division for Teachers and Researchers in Psychology (DTRP) representative
University of Hertfordshire
Email: f.essig@herts.ac.uk
I am in the final year of my PhD, researching the cause of processing costs in task switching, which falls within the field of cognitive psychology. I am specifically looking at error production and time costs produced when switching between different verbal tasks. This area is not well represented in the literature but has strong relevance for everyday behaviour and is very applicable in the burgeoning field of media multitasking. I am developing a predictive model, aiming to determine whether the verbal switching paradigm offers a more powerful approach to studying task switching per se, or whether it constitutes a ‘special class’ of task switching.
Hester Duffy
Communications Officer
University of Plymouth
Email: hester.duffy@gmail.com
I’m at the end of my first year of PhD, looking at the processing of accented speech in both adults and infants. So far we’ve been using behavioural methods with infants (head-turn procedure), and ERP (using an acti-cap) with both adults and infants. We’re about to do an fMRI study with adults, which is massively exciting! It’s quite a wide-ranging field of study; as well as the experimental stuff, I’ve found myself trying to describe various regional and foreign accents in English (trickier than you’d think!), learning phonetics, and brushing up on neuro-anatomy.
Dave Hambrook
Royal Holloway
d.hambrook@rhul.ac.uk
Hi there
I’m just entering into the third year of my doctorate in clinical psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London. My research is foucssing on emotional processing in anorexia nervosa. I am piloting the use of performance test of emotional intelligence in people with anorexia, which has not been attempted before. My research interests lie mainly in the applied clinical arena (eating disorders, body dysmorphic disorder, psycholosis, paediatric clinical health psychology, clinical neuropsychology of emotional disorders and autism). I am also very much interested in LGBT psychology.
Russell Delderfield
University of Bradford
r.delderfield1@bradford.ac.uk
I’m currently two years into a part-time PhD which looks at UK males’ experiences of disordered eating and am interested in talking to other PG researchers dealing with eating disorders, body image and counselling and psychotherapeutic approaches for males, too. I am doing a largely exploratory bricolaged project and am working with men’s written accounts but in a non-narrative way.
I have just ‘recovered’ from a major setback in my work and would also be interested in finding out other PGs experiences of how they overcame issues and got themselves back on track.