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What made you want to study Psychology
I remember being genuinely fascinated about the different ways in which people perceived the physical world, and their social interactions within it. I recall being on my way home from school and wondering whether everybody saw green, for example, in the same way and if not how would you describe a colour without using a colour?! I later found out that these sorts of questions sat within cognitive neuro psychology.

Do you have a favourite brain fact or psychological phenomenon that always blows people's minds?
Amputees can still 'feel' their missing limb! 'Phantom limb' syndrome describe the phenomenon whereby, when a limb is amputated, its representation in the homunculus of the brain is overwritten and invaded by other areas of the body and so sensation can still be felt 'in' or 'by' the missing limb. 

How do you apply what you teach in everyday life?
It's a marathon, not a sprint! When we have a big goal or challenge in front of us, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the magnitude of the end point. This can often prevent us from beginning our journey towards that goal or derail us when the path to the goal is not smooth. By just focussing on the small, immediate, step in front of us we can continue to make steady and meaningful progress towards our goal. 

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received during your academic journey?
''Just do it, every day, until its done'. This was in relation to getting through the final stages of writing up my PhD. Sometimes you've just got to get on with it!

If you could have dinner with any famous psychologist, past or present, who would it be and why?
Prof David Nutt. He engages in really fascinating research about the way in which drugs affect the brain. Human beings have engaged in mind altering substance use, across all cultures, since the dawn of time. From ancient and / or spiritual exploration of the mind, to the deeply societally-ingrained alcohol consumption of the western world, there is a collective interest in such behaviours and the impact of these really interest me on both a cognitive and spiritual level. 

What’s a common myth about Psychology that you often find yourself correcting?
That psychologists can read your mind!! Its so annoying when you say that you are studying, or work in, psychology. People seem to get very worried that you are psychoanalysing them. Psychology is a vast field of the study of the brain and mind, and psychoanalysis is a specialty within a very small part of that. 

Describe #PsychBangor in 3 words
Warm, supportive department!

What made you want to study Psychology        
Nothing - I never 'studied' Psychology! I came to psychology on a completely oblique, left-field, adventurous, curved, unexpected trajectory, starting in biology and going through physiology, neurophysiology, neuropsychology, and cognitive neuroscience, well... and psychology, because after 24 years of practice I have ended up becoming quite well acquainted with psychology, finally!    

What's the most fascinating experiment or study you've ever worked on or learned about?
Wow - how can I choose? I guess discovering that the words you use in a given language changes the way you perceived the world (like colours and objects) was pretty mind blowing. But also the fact that bilinguals constantly resort to accessing their native language when reading or listening to speech in their second language was pretty amazing too. And so was the realisation that babies can learn to distinguish very subtle language sounds differences on the very day they are born. And again the fact that adult international adoptees can still distinguish phonemes that they were never exposed to again after the age of 12 month, when they do not speak or understand their native language...

If you could have dinner with any famous psychologist, past or present, who would it be and why? 
Freud definitely. I would have loved to draw the line between genius and delirium by listening to him. But then Luria probably, for experiencing pure genius, and maybe Oliver Sacks (I should have jumped on the occasion when he gave a public lecture in Bangor!).    

What’s a common myth about Psychology that you often find yourself correcting?   
Wow,  there are so many - One of my favourite myths is the idea that we use only 10% of our brain (that's kind of true but not in this simple guise: we use about 10% at any one time, but these 10% change all the time so we are using all of it!)           

Do you have a favourite brain fact or psychological phenomenon that always blows people's minds? 
You need to attend my Brain and Mind introductory lecture! Human memory is essentially infinite (train it and you will learn more, you cannot fill up that space). 

What's something you wish you'd known when you were deciding what to study?   
That psychopaths exist. That emotions drive our mind (when you are not one of the former). That we cannot understand how humans reason (we know that they do, but not how).          

How do you apply what you teach in everyday life?  
Don't drink and drive, don't take drugs (just don't), don't hurt your brain (wear a helmet), stimulate babies because they are intelligent sponges...        

What’s the strangest or most unexpected thing you’ve learned through your research?  
Telepathy exists... Yeah it does! 

What are some of the coolest career opportunities in Psychology that students might not know about?    
Food designer. 

If you could teach a Psychology concept to anyone in the world, who would it be and what would you teach them?
Elon Musk, altruism and kindness (but then it might be impossible given that empathy is not learnt).

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received during your academic journey?
Don't burn out.

How does Psychology help us understand current trends in society or social media?
This requires five pages of an answer - sorry. But things like fake news beliefs, confirmation bias, attention span, cognitive exhaustion, fashion effects, etc...

What’s your favourite part about teaching Psychology at ȫ���Ʊ?
All of it, but I love teaching brain anatomy and brain-mind links.

Do you have any memorable stories from working with students or in your research?
WOW - where do I start? One of my first undergrad student had his first paper reviewed at Nature Neuroscience. If it got in, he would have had a job before having a master's (he ended being the youngest appointed professor in China, not bad).

Describe #PsychBangor in 3 words.
Uplifting - Human - Inspiring.

What made you want to study Psychology?
I grew up around people who had mental health difficulties, such as my step father who had schizophrenia. I always wanted to understand what caused this to happen to people, and how we can help them.    

If you could have dinner with any famous psychologist, past or present, who would it be and why?     
I would love to sit down with some of the more controversial psychologists to find out where their ideas and perspective came from. Perhaps Freud could tell me all about his own relationship with his father over a lovely bowl of chips, or maybe Watson could give me the behind-the-scenes dirt on his Little Albert study whilst we share an ice cream sundae.

What’s a common myth about Psychology that you often find yourself correcting?      
There are a lot of studies people learn about that seem to be misinterpreted, usually around the quality and implications of the Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram's electric shock studies. I find myself talking about them a LOT!       

What's something you wish you'd known when you were deciding what to study? 
Having a career goal in mind is nice, but changing those goals during your studies is completely fine!             

How do you apply what you teach in everyday life?  
I'm always trying to consider other people's perspectives and experiences when looking at their behaviour. Someone cutting me off in their car probably isn't a horrible person, they're likely dealing with their own problems and are distracted or are in a rush. I should give them a break, because I know I lose track of things from time to time and would like to hope people would be understanding toward me.        

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received during your academic journey?
Academia is more than just being intelligent. It's equally as important to be able to get back up in the face of challenge and defeat.

What’s your favourite part about teaching Psychology at ȫ���Ʊ?
Meeting lots of different people and talking about things that interest us!

Do you have any memorable stories from working with students or in your research?
I was in a research project meeting with some students, we had been discussing the literature in the field that was especially important to our project. During the meeting a member of staff knocks on the door to ask if they can have the room shortly. After they left I then told the students that the person at the door was the lead author of the most important piece of research we were using. They were very shocked!

Describe #PsychBangor in 3 words.
#Fun, #Original, #Exciting

If you could have dinner with any famous psychologist, past or present, who would it be and why? 
Carl Jung. I'd love to chat with him about his theories and to have a discussion about them now that science has moved on. Would he agree with current findings in personality research?    

What’s a common myth about Psychology that you often find yourself correcting? 
I'm not reading your mind. I can't read your mind. I wouldn't want to read your mind!            

What's something you wish you'd known when you were deciding what to study?      
That you don't need your career path set in stone. Psychology is a broad field and you might not end up doing what you thought you would when you first apply for your degree. There are aspects of Psychology that you've probably never even heard of.        

How do you apply what you teach in everyday life?    
I teach Personality and Individual Differences, so most of it applies to real life. I think one of the most useful classes I teach is on motivation - the stuff on academic motivation is really useful for our students.       

What’s your favourite part about teaching Psychology at ȫ���Ʊ?
The students. Our students are incredible. It's an honour to get to work with them. When I teach and they ask really insightful questions, it's a brilliant feeling. 

Do you have any memorable stories from working with students or in your research?
There was that time we took some students to a conference. We set off early and the students got on the coach wearing their pyjamas. When we stopped at a service station to get changed, one of them realised they had forgotten to bring their trousers. We were outside a well known clothes shop at 8.30 waiting for it to open. This happened many years ago and this student is now a lecturer and researcher. 

Describe #PsychBangor in 3 words
Science, community, awesome

What's the most fascinating experiment or study you've ever worked on or learned about?
I worked on a study a few years ago that looked at participant responses to true/false information that was either positive or negative. The interesting thing we found was that participant responses changed, depending on the language of the information: If true but negative sentences were presented in the first language (Welsh), participants accepted it as true. However, if the same information was presented in the second language (English), participants were less likely to accept it as true. This suggests that bilingual people process information differently in each of their languages, which is pretty cool!

If you could have dinner with any famous psychologist, past or present, who would it be and why?  
An obvious one that comes to mind if Philip Zimbardo, who became famous due to his controversial "Stanford prison experiment". I would ask him about the experiment itself, why he chose not to end the study sooner, and how he would redesign the research so that it could be conducted today.   

What’s a common myth about Psychology that you often find yourself correcting?         
Left brain vs right brain! There's no concrete evidence that claims that one side of the brain is more dominant than the other in different people. It's true that the two hemispheres specialize in different processes, but that does not mean that creativity is on the right and logic is on the left!    

What’s the strangest or most unexpected thing you’ve learned through your research?
That the rules of a bilingual's languages seem to interact completely. My research focuses on bilingualism, and how different aspects of our languages (e.g., grammar) interact and influence each other. My research findings suggest that elements of both languages interact, and that we can actually use information about one language (e.g., Welsh) to problem solve when reading in the other language (e.g., English). 

What’s your favourite part about teaching Psychology at ȫ���Ʊ?
My favourite part about teaching Psychology at ȫ���Ʊ is the close community that exists between staff and students. I love being able to chat with students about the course content, their hobbies, and their future plans!

Describe #PsychBangor in 3 words
Interesting; Exciting; Inspiring

What made you want to study Psychology?
I was interested in what makes people tick, why people do the things they do, and what factors affect perception and cognition. How can we use data to change the world? How can we use evidence to make decisions rather than relying on opinions?

If you could have dinner with any famous psychologist, past or present, who would it be and why?
I'm going to cheat and say that all of my colleagues are published experts, and are therefore famous in their field. They are truly the best people to have dinner with and I'm so lucky to be able to call them friends as well as colleagues. I find fame profoundly uninteresting and wish that, as a society, we could stop focusing on status or recognition as a measure of someone's value.

What’s a common myth about Psychology that you often find yourself correcting?
"Learning styles" - for example, are you a "visual", "aural", or "kineaesthetic" learner? It's been debunked for over 20 years, yet is still a prevalent myth in education. This is harmful, as it might prevent teachers from employing a range of techniques with all the children they teach, or lead them to discount learning issues experienced by pupils because the teaching wasn't "in their preferred learning style". In reality, everyone uses a range of styles.

Do you have a favourite brain fact or psychological phenomenon that always blows people's minds?
Hemispatial neglect! Sometimes lesions (usually due to a stroke) can cause people to ignore one side of space. They might shave one side of their face, eat from one side of a plate, draw one half of a flower, and fail to notice anything happening on the other side of space. It's very strange to think that one half of your existence might simply cease to exist for you. The good news is that it usually improves within a few months.

How do you apply what you teach in everyday life?
The most important skill, in my opinion, is critical analysis. While we teach this in psychology, it's valuable across all disciplines. Critical analysis is the ability to evaluate evidence carefully, distinguishing fact from fiction and resisting weak arguments. No-one wants to be midled by disinformation, an increasingly pervasive issue in our society. Honing our critical analysis skills is how we can begin to combat this societal challenge, and since were bombarded with information every day, this is how I apply what I've learned to everyday life.

If you could teach a Psychology concept to anyone in the world, who would it be and what would you teach them?
I'm cheating again, but I'd love to collaborate with economists and teach world leaders and CEOs about the Happiness Index. Teaching leaders how psychological well-being intersects with economic health could promote policies and corporate practices that support the overall quality of life for their people, whilst supporting their organisational (or country's) goals.

What's the weirdest question you've ever been asked as a Psychology lecturer?
"Do you want to meet my sheep?" (The answer was, of course, a resounding "YES".)

Describe #PsychBangor in 3 words
​�ċ�ċ�ċ�ċ�ċ�ċTransformative, Inclusive, Fun.

What's something you wish you'd known when you were deciding what to study?      
I wish I had known the variety of pathways in and out of psychology. Like what I should study if I want to contribute to research (PhD), vs. what degrees would help me become a practicing psychologist (Msc -> D.ForenPsy/D.Clin)       

What’s the strangest or most unexpected thing you’ve learned through your research?
My area of research is sexual violence, and I read in a paper that sexual violence is one of the ONLY crimes where we scrutinise the characteristics of the victim before we look at the perpetrator. And that has always stayed with me.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received during your academic journey?
These were both said by my forensic entomology lecturer in first year while he was talking about the presence of blowflies on decomposing human remains, but it applies to pretty much any part of psychology:
1. Correlation is not causation (i.e., the presence of blowflies in an area is not confirmation that there was a body)
2. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (i.e., absence of blowfly larvae does not mean the absence of a body)

How does Psychology help us understand current trends in society or social media?​�ċ�ċ�ċ�ċ�ċ�ċ
I feel so strongly about psychology assessments which constantly ask you to critically analyse different research to present a viewpoint in the paper; this is such an important aspect of media literacy. Being able to see a person speak passionately about something and then searching for opposing viewpoints to develop opinions is a necessary skill in today's world.

Describe #PsychBangor in 3 words​�ċ�ċ�ċ�ċ�ċ�ċ
​�ċ�ċ�ċ�ċ�ċ�ċApproachable, personal, encouraging

What made you want to study Psychology?
In high school I had some friends with wild intellectual ambitions and I got sucked in. One was going to build space settlements, one was going to cure death, and I was inspired by the film 2001 and the HAL 9000 to figure out how the brain worked.          

What’s a common myth about Psychology that you often find yourself correcting?   
That, yes I'm an experimental psychologist but, no, I won't be psychoanalysing you while we speak.

Do you have a favourite brain fact or psychological phenomenon that always blows people's minds? 
Yes, although not many can believe it, for your everyday sort of parent-child relationship, decades of work and uncountable studies in the field of behavioural genetics have found basically zero influence of parenting style on the child's personality or behaviour, once the child has grown up. I didn't believe it myself when I first heard it, but it's very easy to find the studies.

How does Psychology help us understand current trends in society or social media?
Our brains are powerful systems for perception, thought, and action, and they're finely tuned so we can survive reality. However, as Robert Trivers teaches in his theory of self-deception, reality sometimes takes a back seat to the social environment. So our brains are also designed to systematically misunderstand reality, and to mislead ourselves and others about values and intentions. The argy-bargy of social media is one place where you can see this design for misunderstanding play out.

Do you have any memorable stories from working with students or in your research?
Years back my research was on visual attention, which I liked, while I was teaching about social cognition, which I loved. A student asked "why aren't you doing social cognition research?". Hey good question! A few years later I had changed.

Describe #PsychBangor in 3 words​�ċ�ċ�ċ�ċ�ċ�ċ
Designed for quality.

What made you want to study Psychology?
I completed my undergraduate degree in biomedical science but realised that I did not feel passionately it. I then stumbled upon a psychology textbook and was hooked. I realised I was much more interested in understanding people and why they think and act the way they do.                

Do you have a favourite brain fact or psychological phenomenon that always blows people's minds? 
Neuroplasticity! When a major injury happens, the brain can adapt and reorganise itself, with other parts of the brain stepping in to take on new functions. I think the brain’s ability to form neural connections and rewire pathways in response to experience and learning is fascinating. Similarly, if we stop challenging our minds or learning new things, those neural connections can also weaken over time. So, we really need to keep mentally active to strengthen those pathways!

What's something you wish you'd known when you were deciding what to study?
I wish I had known that choosing a degree does not mean choosing your entire future. I was fixated on picking the “right” course that would determine my future. My path to becoming a psychology lecturer was winding and full of unexpected turns, but each experience added value along the way. Psychology is such a versatile field that there are many ways you can apply yourself. So, I wish I had not stressed about the end goal. Your path doesn’t have to be straight and narrow—each experience adds value.             

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received during your academic journey?
It will ALL BE OK!

How does Psychology help us understand current trends in society or social media?
Psychology is important for fostering critical thinking. In today’s climate of misinformation fuelled partly by social media and conspiracy theories, critical thinking is important for helping us recognise our beliefs and question what we read. By applying psychological concepts we can evaluate information more critically, and make more informed decisions.

Do you have any memorable stories from working with students or in your research?
Two years ago, my colleagues and I teamed up with our Year 2 students to pull off a prank on another lecturer, Tracey Lloyd. Tracey was always annoyed about people getting into the festive spirit before December, so we decided to have some fun. We encouraged the year 2 students to come to her class decked out in Christmas gear – festive sweaters, hats, and decorations. When she walked into her class with Mariah Carey’s ‘All I want for Christmas is you’ song playing on the speakers, her face was priceless! By the end, she warmed up enough to dance to the song. It was good fun! Although there were a few minor leaks about something happening to Tracey that made her suspicious, the Year 2 students were great at keeping secrets!

Describe #PsychBangor in 3
Fun, supportive, great!