Community Engagement in alcohol decision making in England
Dr Joanna Reynolds, Lecturer in Sociology, has just published some new research on the CHEFS (Culture, Health, Environment, Food & Society) blog, on community engagement in alcohol decision making in England. You can read the post in full here.
New staff introductions
Five new members of staff have joined the Psychology department; please see below for an introduction to who they are and what they will be doing here at SHU.
Andrew Du Rocher
My research focuses on the interaction between cognition, emotion and personality. More specifically, I focus on how the presence of emotional stimuli affect cognitive control processes, and on how emotional facial expressions are discriminated. I focus on how affective personality traits such as social anxiety and / or trait anxiety differentially affect these effects. This is ongoing research, but I am also planning research into how anxiety affects emotional memory encoding. Other research interests focus on pedagogy and the factors that influence student engagement such as self-efficacy and attention. I have arrived here from Edge Hill university where I held a visiting lectureship, prior to this I completed my PhD at Goldsmith where I also worked as an associate lecturer / visiting tutor. My PhD was entitled “trait anxiety and the cognitive control of visual affect”.
Peter Olusoga
Peter’s current research focuses on stress, burnout and wellbeing in sports, with a particular interest in elite coaching and the application of Acceptance Commitment Therapy to enhance wellbeing in sport and physical activity. Peter moved to Sheffield from the northeast over 20 years ago to undertake his undergraduate degree in Psychology at the University of Sheffield. Turning his attention to sport, he gained his MSc in Sport and Exercise Science (Psychology) at Sheffield Hallam in 2006, and then stayed on to study for a PhD entitled “Stress & Coping: A Study of Elite Sports Coaches.” This work won the Association of Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) ‘Dissertation of the Year’ award in 2012. In addition to research, Peter is a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society (BPS), and is an active sport psychology consultant, working with athletes and teams in a variety of sports
Dean Petters
Dean comes to Sheffield Hallam from the University of Wolverhampton. He has broad teaching interests across core areas of psychology including: Cognitive Psychology (including cognitive neuroscience); Developmental Psychology (including perceptual and cognitive development as well as Attachment Theory); and Social Psychology (in particular social cognition and relationship science). His major research interest is using autonomous agent and multi-agent simulations to conduct research in Attachment Theory. In particular, using simulations to model the development of patterns of attachment during the first year of life. He also conducts empirical research on close adult relationships. Other major research foci include the study visual object recognition; 4e cognition; and the computational foundations of cognitive science. In March 2019 Dean was awarded the Bowlby-Ainsworth award for research in Attachment Theory. For “Explorations into the history, requirements, and prospects for computational modelling of human attachment”.
Oliver Merry
I have been working towards the completion of my PhD here at SHU since 2016, so you may well recognise me. My research has focused on child sexual grooming offenders, specifically in identifying behavioural and characteristic patterns that can be used to help predict level of risk. I have an interest in all areas of investigative psychology, particularly in conducting research that can provide operational aid to law enforcement.
Sara Hughes
I recently joined Hallam as a full-time lecturer in psychology after spending some time working at Derby University, where I taught on a variety of modules including evolutionary psychology, individual differences and developmental psychology. My research has largely focused on applying evolutionary approaches to individual differences, in relation to personality and susceptibility to persuasion, internal bodily awareness and gossiping behaviour. I am not completely new to Hallam as I am currently working towards completing my PhD here, where I have enjoyed researching the evolutionary function of third-party moral judgement under the supervision of Will Reader.
Please click here to return to this months news bulletin