Dr Jennifer Lay

About me:

I am a Senior Lecturer and Co-Director of Global Engagement in the Department of Psychology at the University of Exeter. My research intersects health, social, cultural, and lifespan developmental psychology. I am broadly interested in how we navigate and make sense of our social and solitary lives, and how culture and development affect these processes. I take a methods-focused approach to research that centers participants’ lived experiences alongside ecological momentary assessments (EMA) and passive sensing using wearable devices (e.g. location tracking, stress biomarkers). I am passionate about modeling complex behavioural data and about teaching research methods and statistics.

Some current research topics:

• Experiences and functions of solitude (time to oneself) across the lifespan. For example, how can people derive benefits from solitude and loneliness? How do cultural norms shape solitude-seeking motivations?

• Accuracy of interoception and self-knowledge. For example, how do our self-concepts (beliefs about ourselves) bias our recall of past experiences? How might age-related changes in interoception affect health behaviours (e.g. responses to increasingly hot temperatures)?

• Participatory approaches and passive sensing tools for wellbeing. For example, how are geospatial patterns of helping behaviour linked with wellbeing in older adulthood? How can we use spoken & written language to detect neurocognitive disorders and loneliness?

After my PhD in Health Psychology (Quantitative Methods minor) at the University of British Columbia (Health and Adult Development Lab), I worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Motivation and Emotion Lab) from 2018 to 2020. Before pursuing psychology, I was a geomatics engineer (BSc, Schulich School of Engineering), and I continue to apply geospatial tools in my research.

Keywords: affective science, cultural psychology, ecological momentary assessments, lifespan development, memory, quantitative methods, self-knowledge, solitude