Staff profile
| Affiliation | Telephone |
|---|---|
| Career Development Fellow in the Department of Psychology |
Biography
Current Role
My background in Neuroscience and a passion for understanding how socio-cultural context can affect brain and behaviour led me to pursue a NINE DTP (ESRC) funded Cognitive Neuroscience PhD at the Department of Psychology at Durham University under the supervision of Prof Hausmann and Dr Matejko. Following this, I am currently a Career Development Fellow in the same department.
My research broadly explores sex/gender differences in cognitive performance, especially in math and spatial tasks. Throughout my PhD, I have used a biopsychosocial approach, which looks at the interactive effects of steroid hormones, self-perception of ability, and gender stereotypes. I am also interested in the development of sex/gender differences in cognitive performance and have conducted a developmental study with a focus on anxiety-performance links in math and spatial tasks. For this study, I have engaged in community outreach and collected data at Junior Scientist in 2023 and am collaborating with Dr Moriah Sokolowski at the Toronto Metropolitan University. I recently presented my research at a workshop in the lab of Prof Jansen at the University of Regensburg and, through a poster, at the 12th International Meeting Steroids and Nervous System, which took place at the University of Turin.
Being someone who deeply cares about equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) within and outside of my research, I have worked with the EDI self-assessment team as a Postgraduate Research (PGR) representative in 2021 and 2022 to identify EDI issues that the student body felt affected by within the Department of Psychology at Durham University. I have also helped with the Athena Swan Silver Award renewal application. During the academic year 2021/22, I was the PGR student representative in the Department of Psychology alongside Tyler Ross. In this role, I was the main organiser of the 2022 PGR Conference, in addition to running a few community-fostering activities.
Research interests
- A biopsychosocial approach to cognitive sex/gender differences
- Development of sex/gender differences in cognition
- Gender stereotypes
- Neuromodulatory properties of sex/stress hormones
- Stress effects on cognition
- Anxiety-performance links
- Spatial cognition