Profile

Hello!

I’m Ashleigh and I’m a PhD student in the School of Psychology at Bangor University. I live in Anglesey with my boyfriend and our dog Blue (she’s the pooch in the picture!), and we live right next to fields full of donkeys, lambs, and peacocks which is great fun.

This is some of the sea glass I’ve found. I’m looking forward to filling that big jar!

One of my favourite things about Anglesey and North Wales is going to all of the pretty beaches with the dog. I really enjoy looking for sea glass, which is bits of broken glass that have rolled around in the sea for a very long time until it’s become smooth. I like to fill jars with it to make pretty decorations for my house 😊

I love to play video games and spend more time than I should on my PS4, although I’ve recently got a Nintendo Switch so I can play some more active games to keep moving during lockdown. I’ve started playing a boxing game and I don’t think I’m very good at it 🙈

I also really enjoy planning holidays, and I’m looking forward to being able to plan something fun for in the future. My favourite holiday I’ve ever been on was to Cuba, because I got to spend a week in an amazing place with one of my favourite people – and we got to swim with dolphins!

I’m a PhD student in the School of Psychology at Bangor University, and I’m looking at whether taking part in martial arts changes the way our brain works!

I don’t do martial arts but my supervisor (the boss!) does – she’s a black belt in Karate! This means that we can have really fun discussions because we both have a different view of things.

We have found some really interesting findings about how well we can pay attention to things, especially unexpected things. This is about a type of attention known as ‘alertness’ – imagine that I threw a ball to you when you weren’t expecting it. Your alertness would play a big part in how likely you are to catch that ball. Martial artists are really good at this! It’s probably because of how they train, because they have to make sure they don’t get hit or punched so they get good at dodging unexpected things.

This work got published in a scientific article which was really exciting and scary! I had to write my work up and then other scientists got to read over it and give feedback. My mum was so proud that she sent it to everyone she knew! It was also talked about in newspapers, and I even got invited to speak live on South African radio about it! That was an amazing experience!

At the moment I’m finishing writing about all my experiments for my PhD thesis (like a big book of all the work I’ve done over the past three years, like lots of long essays), and hopefully by the end of 2020 I’ll be able to call myself Dr Ashleigh Johnstone!

I also teach psychology which I find really fun, it’s cool to be the one to introduce students to some really great and interesting concepts and studies.

Now that I’ve finished my data collection for my PhD, I spend a lot of time at my desk these days. If you’re spending a lot of time at your desk I think it’s important to make it an enjoyable place to be! I like to have lots of pictures and postcards up and (most importantly!) a jar of chocolate to keep me going as I work.

The famous chocolate jar!

It’s also important to have some breaks, so I like to be able to pop into the garden and throw the ball for the dog a little bit, or to go and see the donkeys. The fresh air and a bit of a run around helps kick start the motivation again!