Research interests of potential PhD supervisors
The following lists the research interests of members of academic staff who are actively interested in recruiting PhD students from October 2009, including students initially registered for an MSc in October 2009 who hope to proceed to a PhD from 2010. Some indicate specific projects that potential applicants may wish to consider.
Other members of staff may also be approached as potential supervisors for 2010-11, but are not actively recruiting.
Centre for Research In Animal Behaviour
Social, Economic, Environmental and Organisational Group
I’m an experimental cognitive psychologist with interests in human attention and performance, psycholinguistics and working memory. The majority of my work has used chronometric behavioural measures with normal adult subjects, but I have also studied brain-damaged patients. I’m currently using electrophysiological (EEG/ERP) methods and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in normal adults. The main focus of my current research is control of task-set – how we organise our minds/brains to perform one of the many tasks that the current environment affords. I have an ongoing ESRC-supported project (with Prof Ian McLaren) on memory for recent occurrence: for example, how do we know we last saw the person now walking past the window a few minutes ago?
Prof Stephen Monsell, Professor of Cognitive Psychology
Alex Haslam is Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology. He conducts research into a range of core social and organisational topics — including leadership and motivation, stereotyping and prejudice, group conflict and tyranny, stress and well-being. This work is largely informed by principles of social identity and self-categorisation theories — a tradition in which he has an extensive background.
Several years ago, Alex collaborated with Steve Reicher from the University of St Andrews to conduct the BBC Prison Study. The study was one of the largest in social psychology in the last 30 years and this was the basis for BBC2’s ground-breaking documentary The Experiment (for details see www.bbcprisonstudy.org) as well as a number of major publications on tyranny, stress and leadership.
Alex is a recipient of the European Association of Social Psychology's Kurt Lewin award for “outstanding contribution to research in social psychology”. He is a fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and of the American Psychological Society. His work with Michelle Ryan on the ‘glass cliff’ was short-listed for the Times Higher Education ‘Research Project of the Year’ in 2005 and this was also identified by the New York Times Magazine as one of the ‘Best 100 Ideas’ of 2008. His most recent book is The New Psychology of Leadership: Identity, Influence and Power (with Reicher and Platow; Psychology Press).
Prof
Alex Haslam, Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology
