Profile

I live in Cheltenham in Gloucestershire in a 1920s style house with my husband. I enjoy cooking, running, music and films. My favourite foods are pasta, pizza, ice cream and croissants. My biggest love is travelling and my favourite places I have visited include Bali, Colombia and New York. I also enjoy fashion, in particular vintage and retro styles of the 1950’s and 1960’s.

I am originally from a small town just outside of Birmingham where few of my classmates when to University. Going to university was a big step for me and one of the best things I have ever done. I made many friends, improved my confidence and fell in love with psychology.

I have been interested in psychology since I was about 16 and I have never stopped being fascinated by how our mind works, how we interact with our environment and other people and what it is that makes us human!

I am a lecturer in health psychology and I study the effects of drugs such as alcohol and tobacco on the way we think and behave. I run laboratory based experiments with humans where I observe the effects of drugs on computerised tasks designed to explore different thought patterns.

My work looks at how thinking changes in people when they consume alcohol. When people are drunk they often do things that they would not normally do, such as act aggressively or cause harm to others. I am interested in why this happens and which thought processes are involved.

I am also interested in how alcohol and tobacco products are marketed and how this may influence people’s smoking and drinking. I have been working with colleagues in South America to try and understand why many children and adults smoke in some countries and how this might be influenced by tobacco packaging and marketing.

Another part of my work I am particularly passionate about is something called public engagement. This is where I talk with non-scientists about my work. I like to make sure that all different types of people have access to good evidence based information about their health.

On a typical day I will get a coffee from the café on campus at the University. I may have several different things to do in day that usually relate to teaching or research.

In terms of teaching I  may meet with students to discuss their work, teach in big or small groups and mark essays and reports.

My research can involve giving talks (sometimes in nice places across the world), running experiments, analysing data, writing-up and interpreting my findings, designing new experiments and talking to the media about what I found in my latest research.