I have interests and expertise in self-regulation – how people direct their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours in order to achieve their goals – and in the design, application, and evaluation of interventions designed to promote positive and lasting changes in people’s behaviour. My research uses theoretical models of behaviour (e.g., control theory, COM-B model, theory of planned behaviour) in order to understand why people’s efforts to self-regulate are sometimes compromised and how this process can be promoted. I collaborate with a range of stakeholders in order to understand behaviour in different contexts and I am passionate about collaborating on interdisciplinary research projects, where global challenges are considered from multiple perspectives and solutions are informed by a wide range of expertise.

I am currently involved in three lines of research:

• I am working with scientists across the university on a project that seeks to reduce the impact that plastic waste is having on the environment. My research seeks to understand people’s attitudes and behaviours towards plastic, and we are testing strategies and interventions designed to promote the use of reusable packaging and containers. I am also collaborating with colleagues from the School of Dentistry exploring the publics’ attitudes towards sustainability in healthcare, and their willingness to make sacrifices for more sustainable healthcare services.

• I am working with psychologists and computer scientists to develop a set of tools to allow people (e.g., academics, practitioners) to explore the relationship between different behaviours. While the relationship between some behaviours may be intuitive (e.g., the relationship between different health behaviours), others may be less intuitive (e.g., whether health behaviours are associated with pro-environmental behaviours). Such tools will allow users to test a wide range of hypotheses about how (and when) different behaviours are related.

• I am interested in how individual differences (e.g., in people’s time perspective) influence people’s behaviour and goal outcomes.

Psychiatric classification. Psychosis (‘schizophrenia’, ‘bipolar disorder’): the mechanisms involved in hallucinations, delusions and other symptoms. The social determinants of mental ill-health. Psychological treatments.

I’m interested in the development of children’s executive functions, which are the collection of cognitive skills that support goal directed thinking and self-regulation. I am interested in how they develop in toddlers and preschoolers, why we see individual differences in these skills and how their development can be best supported. My research also examines how executive functions might relate to school readiness and how social inequalities might shape their development.

I am currently leading an ESRC funded longitudinal study 'The Sheffield Early Years Study' to examine how executive functions develop in the toddler and preschool years. I am interested in the important role that parents play in buffering the impacts of social inequality and how language may shape the development of executive functions. For more information, please see our project website here.

I am currently working with colleagues at the University of Oxford and Ulster University to design and evaluate interventions to support maths skills and cognitive development. In one study we are trialling whether we can reduce socioeconomic disadvantage in early maths by working with practitioners to embed executive functions into fun learning activities (The ONE intervention; funded by the Education Endowment Foundation). In another study, we are examining the role the home environment plays in early maths by running secondary analyses on a large-scale dataset and designing and trialling a co-produced parent intervention (PLUS study; funded by the Nuffield Foundation).

I'm also leading a research project with Fiona Scott in the School of Education, Michelle McGillion (University of Warwick) and the National Childbirth Trust to understand the unique experiences new parents have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Please see the project website here.

I am part of the Sheffield Cognitive Development Group where we run child development studies with local schools and families. If you would like to take part in our studies with your child, or if you want to find out more about our lab group, please see the Sheffield Cognitive Development Research Group page.

My research investigates drivers of behaviour, and ways to increase engagement in healthy and sustainable behaviours. My main research areas are in the psychology of eating behaviour and weight management, including dietary and psychological strategies for appetite control, weight management and weight stigma. I am also interested in and have led research projects investigating ways to encourage environmentally sustainable behaviours, such as reducing dietary meat intake and encouraging sustainable waste behaviours. I am currently leading the behavioural workstream of an industry-academic consortium on compostable packaging (funded by UKRI Innovate UK). Furthermore, a main theme of my research is investigating individual variability – understanding the psychological characteristics which contribute to why some individuals are more or less likely to engage in health or pro-environmental behaviours, and the implications of this for individually-tailored interventions.

My research career began with a BSc in Psychology from the University of Sussex. During this time, I undertook research positions at Arizona State University’s Health and Ageing Laboratory and Conditioned Feeding Laboratory which inspired my interest in human appetite research. I subsequently obtained my PhD from the University of Leeds in 2013 which examined the impact of environmental prompts on snack and meal intake. I then spent three years as a post-doctoral researcher in the Human Appetite and Research Unit at the University of Leeds conducting a clinical trial which investigated the effects of energy density on appetite control and weight loss. Following my post-doctoral positions, in 2017 I joined the University of Sheffield as a lecturer in Psychology.

Research interests

The development of cognitive control

The ability to think and act in a flexible manner is a fundamental part of human cognition. My main research interest focuses on the cognitive mechanisms that allow children to think and act flexibly, in particular looking at the development of inhibitory control during early childhood. I’m also interested in looking at how other domain-general cognitive processes, including symbolic understanding and strategic reasoning, interact with executive skills.

I conduct research into the psychological mechanisms that underlie alcohol problems and other addictions. I am particularly interested in the roles of decision-making and impulse control in addiction, recovery, and behaviour change more broadly.

To give some examples, I conduct laboratory research to investigate determinants of motivated behaviour, and I work with people with alcohol problems to study the process of recovery and to investigate novel translational treatments.

My research has been funded by the MRC, ESRC, Wellcome Trust and Alcohol Research UK, among other organisations.

Research interests

• Autism Spectrum Disorders (including the broader autism phenotype)
• Visual attention,
• Eye movements, 
• Gaze cues, 
• Social cognition,
• Neural correlates of visual attention

My research interests focus on understanding neurovascular coupling, in particular examining which cells and molecules are involved. I use a wide range of imaging techniques to investigate how the brain regulates its blood supply in order to meet the changing demands of neuronal activity. In particular, I am interested in the role of astrocytes, a supporting cell within the brain. This research helps us to understand normal brain function, enables us to correctly interpret the signals measured in human neuroimaging studies and to understand what happens in diseases where there are disruptions in the coupling between energy use and supply, for example stroke, dementia and aging.

Research interests

The coupling between neural activity and the changes in blood flow, volume and oxygenation.

My interest is in Impulsivity-Compulsivity and mood-related disorders, and I try to approach them as two research themes. One focusing on identifying novel neural/behavioural/computational markers relatable to clinical symptoms. Second, to design symptom management protocols by targeting the identified markers.

I employ non-invasive stimulation (transcranial magnetic /electrical stimulation), electrophysiology (such as EEG), and computational modelling to understand and modulate the underlying physiology and pathophysiology.

Research interests

Developmental Psychology & Language Development. Current focus on pragmatic and lexical development in infancy.

Not currently taking new PhD students

Research interests

Health Psychology; predicting and changing health behaviour; habit and health behaviour; intention-behaviour relations; planning and implementation intentions; self-affirmation; binge drinking.

I research autism and neurodiversity with a general focus on autism in adulthood. I have interests across several areas including:

- Autism and selective attention

My major research focus selective attention in autism. In recent work I have been investigating attention capture and the environmental factors which shape how distracting stimuli are suppressed.

- Autism and time

Research on temporal cognition in autism (i.e., understanding concepts related to time and thinking about the past and future) and whether any differences are relevant in an educational context.

- Adult autism diagnosis

Researching the support/information which is available after receiving an autism diagnosis in adulthood.

- Meta autism research

I am interested in how autism research is conducted and what can be improved to benefit autistic people. In particular, the experience of participating in research and the use of open research practices in the field.

My research addresses identifying the factors underlying risky and antisocial behaviours in young people and the development of interventions to reduce these problematic behaviours. Major focusses have been on conduct disorder and oppositional defiant disorder in children and adolescents, and risky driving in young motorists. Other work has addressed suicide, self-harm and alcohol use. I have been involved in evaluating existing evaluations (e.g., for South Yorkshire Safer Roads Partnership) and designing novel interventions which have taken a variety of forms form small group sessions to information sheets. In all cases interventions are informed by an understanding of the causal factors that underlie the target behaviour and by theories of behaviour change.

Research interests

Learning and decision making

• Ageing
• Expertise
• Skill development
• Nonlinear modelling
• Bayesian models
• Electronic health records
• Natural language processing

Research interests

I am a social psychologist, interested in self-regulation and behaviour change. Specifically, I am interested in how people achieve their goals and make changes to their behaviour.

The usual answer is that people need to be motivated. However, even medium-to-large changes in people's intentions seem to have only a small-to-medium effect on their behavior. In short, motivation is not enough. As a result, much of my research to date has investigated how the effects of motivation can be boosted by forming specific plans - known as "implementation intentions" - that links good opportunities to act with suitable responses to those opportunities.

I am a social psychologist, with a particular focus on behaviour change and intergroup relations. My key research interests centre around understanding and changing social, health and environmental behaviours, and evaluating and improving interventions to reduce prejudice. Much of my research at the moment focuses on applying behavioural science to the issue of indoor air quality and pollution. 

Cognitive plasticity through short-term interventions (e.g. working memory training) and life-long experiences (e.g. bilingualism); individual differences and age-related change in cognitive abilities, in particular executive functions and working memory; development of Tatool, an open-source experiment software