Biography
I am an international expert in Cognition, how our mind deals with visual ambiguities, why people perceive stimuli in different ways, how we "see" environments in our mind in the absence of visual input, and true and false memories of our environemnt (memories for scenes, for fake news, for associative information) . My work has a broad reach (referenced in Wikipedia “ambiguous figures”, in focus at high-impact journals, monograph). The appeal of my research is also evidenced by funding success (e.g., ESRC, British Academy, EU). I am currently leading the “The centre for mind and creativity research – CEDAR” which vision is to examine Cognition in a fast changing world and to use the knowledge from Cognition in the building of our environment. I am also the research lead for Psychology at Napier University and mentor to early career researchers. I have a real passion for outreach and public engagement (ESRC festival of science, Health showcases, Big Bang STEM event, Medifest) reaching more than 1500 primary and secondary school children to date. My external profile roles also support activities in the centre: I am the Associate Editor for the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, Member of the ESRC Peer Review College, Member of the Carnegie Peer Review College, Member of the Experimental Psychology Society. I obtained more than £100,000 in grant funding as principal investigator from the ESRC, British Academy and Experimental Psychology Society. I have also been Co-I of the interdisciplinary CogNovo consortium, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD training network funded by the European Union (approximately £4000,000). I originally gained my PhD from Stirling University working on the development of ambiguous figure perception. Since then I had various research positions at Stirling University, Lancaster University and Warwick University researching topics in Cognition such as false memories, mental imagery, and pictorial representation. I started my first lectureship at Plymouth University in 2011 before moving to Edinburgh Napier University as Associate Professor.