Psychology Research Project Supervisors

A bit about me: I work as a researcher at Cancer Council Queensland, mostly focussed on increasing bowel cancer screening through Australia's national program. I also research cancer screening behaviour in the other two national screening programs: BreastScreen and cervical screening. I did my PhD at UQ in health psychology and am particularly interested in research that can be applied. As a supervisor I encourage weekly meetings, early drafts, and taking care of yourself during honours.

Project options:

• Differences between consumer and expert ratings for videos promoting bowel cancer participation.
• Contributing to development of a new measure of screening "likelihood". It is challenging to measure screening behaviour (due to privacy, access and funding limitations), so we need good measures that align with behaviour to identify targets for interventions to increase screening uptake.
• Other projects related to psychological factors that impact health and cancer risk, particularly via online surveys or an interview study. This can include factors such as self-efficacy, outcome expectancies, perceived risk, access to healthcare and education, and norms.

If you’re interested, feel free to email me and we can schedule a time for a chat - lauraanderson@cancerqld.org.au :)

I’m broadly interested in the development of metacognition, creativity in problem-solving, and cognitive offloading. My research has primarily focused on how children think and act in the face of cognitive problems, revealing important insights into children’s awareness of their cognitive limits, and the flexible and creative strategies they devise to surpass such limits. More recently, I've been interested in children’s use of digital “thinking tools”, like computers, smartphones, and tablets, and whether there are cognitive consequences of growing up in the digital age. I've also been exploring the effects of children's exposure to AI-powered tools (like ChatGPT) on their creativity and problem-solving. 

I have ideas for Honours projects in 2024, but am also enthusiastic about students being able to bring their own ideas to the table. While I work primarily with children (and am based in the Early Cognitive Development Centre), I have also run studies with undergraduate adults and would be open to either a developmental or adult study in an area of mutual interest. 

It won't let me upload a photo, but imagine I look something like this:  :~)

My research is concerned with links between brain activity and our conscious sensory experiences - including imagined sensory experiences. If you join my group you will become a member of a dynamic team of researchers, with fellow research students and a postdoctoral research fellow (Dr Blake Saurels), in addition to myself and collaborative researchers here at UQ and overseas. You will have an opportunity to learn about how to record the electrical activity of the brain (electroencephalography - EEG), computational modelling and psychophysical experiments - in order to answer questions about our conscious experiences. I am particularly keen to hear from students who are interested in a career in sensory neuroscience research.

This year the following project is available in my lab.

Aphantasia, imagined experiences and brain waves. There are enormous differences between the subjective intensity of different peoples imagined sensory experiences - including people who cannot have imagined sensory experiences at all - Aphantasics. 

An ongoing focus of research in my lab is to discover why some people can have voluntary imagined sensory experiences, while others cannot. On this project you would be working with two Aphantasics, myself and PhD student Loren Bouyer, in addition to leading academics based in London and Auckland.  For further details, see the project website (link below)

Perception Lab - The University of Queensland, Australia (uq.edu.au)

For more details, also consult my lab home page. Also feel free to contact me via email or in person.

Perception - Lab Homepage

My research interests are in the areas of motivation and well-being. I am particularly interested in understanding how the dynamic interaction between factors such as workload, time pressure, effort, stress, and fatigue play out over time. This research addresses important practical questions ranging from issues relating to how individuals can best manage their time and energy while working on projects (e.g., how can students effectively navigate their honours year?) to broader questions about the role that work should play in society (e.g., what are the advantages and disadvantages of the four-day working week?).

The projects I'm supervising this year examine the impact of working hours on well-being. Understanding this relationship has important implications for individuals, organisations, and policymakers seeking to improve work-life balance. Yet, it's complex. Engagement in work is fulfilling, promotes social connection, and enables financial security, but evidence for the harmful effects of overwork is mounting. These projects will aim to understand how changes in working hours over time influence well-being outcomes at different timescales. One project will use national panel survey data to examine how and why transitions from full-time to part-time work influence well-being over several years. The other will involve using daily diary measures to examine how the amount of time someone spends at work each day affects well-being over several weeks.

As a supervisor, I encourage my students to set short-term goals that promote consistent progress throughout the year. I emphasise the independence of thought and encourage students to develop their own ideas.  I’m looking for students who are motivated and willing to work hard. In return, I will aim to not only help you do well in your thesis but also to develop the skills necessary for life after honours.  If you’re interested in chatting about supervision, I look forward to meeting you at the honours meet and greet.

I am particularly interested in a couple of key areas of social psychology, firstly racism and intergroup relations, and secondly sex and gender relations.

This year I am working on a number of projects looking at how the intergroup contact that we have with members of other groups can shape our attitudes.

In particular, does intergroup contact impact on racism? Does the intergroup contact we see in TV shows, and the media, influence how much we want to make intergroup friends? Does negative intergroup contact polarize us (e.g., in the case of the recent US election)?

Honours students who work with me may choose to work in one of these areas, or, of course, pitch a project in a related area!

As a supervisor, I would focus on weekly meetings, early data collection, and early drafts of written work.

See you this year!

Welcome to Honours!

My area of expertise is within the areas of cognitive control and attention and eye movements. If you're looking for an Honours Supervisor within this area and would like to talk to me, please contact me: s.becker@psy.uq.edu.au

My research is mainly in the area of Cognitive Science and revolves around attention and perception; specifically around the question: What are the factors that guide visual attention and eye movements? Below you'll find some project outlines that are good examples of the kind of projects that I’m offering this year.

Are items processed in a context-dependent manner?

Current theories of visual attention (Feature Integration Theory; Guided Search 2.0; Optimal Tuning) assume that attention is biased to specific feature values in visual search. For instance, when looking for an orange, we would tune attention to the specific colour (orange) and shape (round) to find it faster. However, my own research shows that attention is often tuned in a context-dependent manner to specific features. That is: When the context contains many yellow items, attention will be tuned to all redder items or the reddest item rather than orange. Conversely, when the context contains many red items, attention is tuned to the yellowest items. The corresponding account has been labelled the Relational Account (Becker, 2010), and we have been able to show that it allows more accurate predictions than other accounts. There are still many open questions that could be explored in an Honours project, as for example:

(1) What are the limitations of relational tuning? Does it only occur within category boundaries as imposed by language (e.g., only within the red / yellow categories), or does it operate across category boundaries (e.g., bleeding into green in search for red/yellow)?

(2) What happens if we render relational search impossible and force tuning attention to specific feature values? Is the resulting feature-specific search slower, or more vulnerable to distraction?

(3) Previous research has shown that we can suppress or inhibit visually salient items, but it’s not that clear what feature(s) actually get inhibited. Is this inhibition also context-dependent and broad, or does it only apply to the specific feature of the salient distractor?

(4) Previous research has shown that information about a search target (e.g., orange and round) is stored in Visual Short-Term memory (VSTM). When does this ‘target template’ change to a context-dependent search strategy? Does this require learning, or can it be achieved with the first glance at a visual scene?

(5) Does relational search also operate in displays with multiple different items and distractors that mimic natural environments?

If you'd like to gain an overview of the central topics of interest, you can read these two papers (downloadable from www.sibecker.com):

Becker, S.I. (2014). Guidance of attention by feature relationships: The end of the road for feature map theories? In Horsley, M., Eliot, M., Riley, R., and Knight, B. (Eds.) Current Trends in Eye Tracking Research. Springer (pp. 37-49).

Becker, S.I. (2013). Why you cannot map attention. A relational theory of attention and eye movements. Australian Psychologist, 48, 389-398.

Because running injuries are complex, there is a lack of research addressing their effectiveness in managing or preventing them. Even with a huge amount of data on running-related injuries, there may still be a lack of understanding of the precise role that self-regulation plays in preventing running-related injuries.

The present project aims to explore the self-regulation processes and factors influencing injury prevention and management behaviours in novice and experienced runners. This project will contribute to the advancement of knowledge by determining if there are significant relationships between self-regulation, running experience, and injury status, providing valuable insights into the role of self-regulation in mitigating running-related injury risk across different runner profiles.

Specific research objectives are to explore the variations in self-regulation techniques between inexperienced and experienced runners that they believe are successful or unsuccessful in managing or preventing their injuries, and the barriers or drivers towards adopting preventive and at-risk behaviours.

The results will help to identify key factors influencing self-regulation in runners, to develop more effective injury management and prevention strategies to enhance the overall running experience while reducing the risk of injuries, benefiting both novice and experienced runners. This study will assist in the creation of targeted interventions to promote the healthy practice of running and, ultimately, recommend running as a form of physical activity among the general population.

I am a clinical psychologist whose research focuses on the understanding and treatment of anxiety disorders.

The most effective treatment for anxiety is exposure therapy ("facing your fears"). For example, someone who is fearful of spiders should calmly and gradually approach spiders rather than avoid them.

I am particularly interested in attitudes regarding the use of exposure therapy. I am also interested in how parents can assist their child to face their fears.

I'm a Research Fellow in the  ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course, at the Institute for Social Science Research. My research interests and expertise fall under the broad themes of gender and sexuality, family dynamics, social inequalities, and longitudinal and life-course studies. 

In 2024, I am happy to supervise research projects related to these broad topics:

• Domestic, family, and sexual violence
• Gender and sexuality diversity (LGBTQ)
• Single parents and post-separation families

Please reach out if you want to have a chat about potential projects in one of these areas: alice.campbell@uq.edu.au

I only have capacity to supervise two Honours students in 2024, and both are now confirmed (sorry, not available to meet others). Below are some of the projects we offered.

One of the projects will be developing and validating a tool to measure psychosocial wellbeing outcomes in our youth intervention in middle school.  The student will lead the literature review, instrument development and protocol for the pilot validation, with a manuscript on the process to be submitted for publication.

The other project is a qualitative study (in-depth interviews/focus group discussion) of loneliness among caregivers of older patients with chronic illnesses like dementia. The student will lead the protocol development, interview conduct, thematic analysis and manuscript production.

One of our projects for a subsequent year will be looking at the adaptation of the Groups4Health program to prevent and manage loneliness and social disconnectedness among older people in residential aged care and the community. It will involve a mixed methods approach with a first-stage co-design with health service providers and older consumers, and a second pilot implementation phase. Honours students will be involved in the first stage from ethics submission through production of the modified facilitators' manual and workbook, to completion of the protocol for implementation stage.

My research explores the links between adverse childhood experiences, parenting, and wellbeing, across the life course and across generations.  It aims to identify ways we can support families who are affected by historic or current adversities (e.g., trauma, social disadvantage, relationship conflict, child maltreatment), through evidence-based policy and practice.  Towards this aim, I use quantitative and qualitative analyses of survey datasets, and contribute to trials of parenting interventions. 

I am not able to take on any more students for 2024. 

Dr. Gary Chan is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research. His principal research interest lies in the field of substance misuse prevention and the application of cutting-edge statistical method for longitudinal analysis. His recent publications have been focused on electronic cigarette use among young people, portrayal of substance related content on social media (e.g. TikTok, Instagram, etc) and the epidemiology of substance use in the population. He has also served as a consultant at the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime to improve existng methods for monitoring global trends of illicit substance production, trafficking and use. This work has made significant impact on how global data will be collected, and these new data will be used by the United nations and many national governments to inform drug policy decision making. He collaborates extensively with leading researchers in major national and international institutes, including the University of Washington, Murdoch Children's Research Institute, University of Melbourne, and University College London.

He is a Deputy Statistical and Methodology Editor for the journal Addiction.

I have the following projects available for honour students. These projects will be suitable for students who are interested in pursuing a PhD after the honour year. A very high level of statistical skills are required (except for the first project on social media).

1. Tiktok, Instagram, Twitter and substance use
   1. How are substance use portray in popular social media?
   2. How are these social media influencing young people perception of substance use?
2. Substance use and mental health across life course
   1. This study will use existing national data to examine association between various type of substance and mental health across life course. How are the association between substance use and mental health varies in different life stage?
3. Patterns of polysubstance use and demographic predictors
   1. Polysubstance use is a particularly detrimental form of substance use. This study will examine changes in patterns/ combination of polysubstance use in recent year and
4. Transition from e-cigarette use to smoking
   1. E-cigarette has been gaining popularity among young people. This study will examine factors that facilitate transition from e-cigarette use to cigarette smoking using an existing data.
5. Gaming Addiction
   1. This study will estimate the impact of gaming addiction on health.

If you are interested in pursuing a PhD after your honour year, my projects will be ideal for you. Except for the first project (social media), my projects will be based on existing large data (no data collection is required), and my projects will require high level of statistical skills (a very good understanding of all techniques covered in the third-year statistics class is required). There would be opportunities for publications in peer-reviewed journal and presentation in national conference.

Subcortical brain structures are known to be involved in regulating arousal and are linked to a number of mental disorders. This honours project aims to assess whether an innovative form of focal non-invasive brain stimulation of a subcortical region can produce measurable changes in arousal over a short period of time. In an exploration of the dose effect of the focal stimulation, the study will investigate multiple stimulation intensities. This project will provide exposure to a unique ultrasound laboratory and experience in a research setting. The student will also gain expertise in statistical modelling.

One honours project is available to be co-supervised by Dr Laetitia Coles and Dr Sally Staton. Dr Coles and Dr Staton are research fellows at the Queensland Brain Institute. They work in multi-disciplinary team of developmental scientists, undertaking large scale longitudinal and natural-experimental studies with embedded studies to understand the mechanisms that enable or limit children's life chances. Dr Coles has a particular interest in the role of families and work on children’s lives. Dr Staton is a Development Psychologist whose work focuses on child sleep development and the impacts of care environments on children’s health and developmental outcomes. Honours project will focus on questions around the relationship between family life patterns and child and parent sleep, or on experiences of children with disability and their families.

I am a clinical psychologist, Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society (APS) and have specialist endorsement in the APS Health and Clinical Colleges.

My main research focus is substance use disorders. Research areas include substance use assessment and treatment, genetic markers of alcohol and nicotine dependence, measurement of alcohol craving, novel psychological models of problem drinking and the prevention of youth substance abuse.

For 2024, I have the following Honours project planned:

Broad Topic (specific research questions to be generated by student):

The prevelance, psychological correlates and treatment outcomes of adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in treatment seeking, alcohol dependence patients.

Method:

Existing clinical data with current human ethics approval. Application to add student to ethics and UQ ratification will be required.

Data from Queensland Health:

• Adult ADHD screener
• Alcohol and other Drug use
• Alcohol dependence severity
• Alcohol-related drinking constructs (several)
• Treatment outcomes from a 12-week CBT program

Type of suitable students:

The project would be suited to a student interested in clinical psychology and considering applying for a postgraduate clinical psychology program in 2025.

I am a CJ Martin fellow, based at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (st Lucia campus), in the group of Peter Visscher and Naomi Wray. Historically, our group (PCTG https://cnsgenomics.com/) has a strong focus on human genetics/genomics, although my work focuses on the analysis of brain MRI data.

The methods and software we use in neuroimaging are shared with the field of genetics/genomics, meaning the student will acquire highly transferrable skills and knowledge. In addition, the dynamic environment of the program in complex trait genomics (PCTG), will support the student to to enrich their knowledge in the fast-paced / rapidly-evolving field of computational neuroimaging and human genetics.

We seek applicants with an inclination for problem solving and computational work.

Large scale neuroimaging study of Alzheimers’ disease

This project will involve the analysis of a large neuroimaging cohort, which contains thousands of elderly individuals imaged using MRI. Our lab develops statistical methods for the analysis of fine-grained brain images, which will be applied to analyse this cohort. Our approach allows refining the traditional neuroimaging analyses, that have been performed at a region of interest level, which can miss some of the fine-grained brain variation. The results will contribute to our current large-scale initiative that combines results from all continents, to create a high-resolution map of the brain regions associated with Alzheimer’s disease as well as with specific functional and cognitive domains.  In particular, the student will perform neuroimaging analyses of one or several memory domains available in the cohort (e.g. WAIS-R Digit Symbol, WAIS-R Digit Span, WMS-R Logical Memory, Boston Naming Test). We expect the fine-grained brain map to refine our current understanding of the grey-matter regions associated with cognition domains.

Using machine learning to impute neuropsychological scores across multiple cohorts

This project will focus on imputing neuropsychological scores using multi-cohort data. We have gathered 10+ neuroimaging cohorts of elderly individuals and each cohort has collected a (sub)set of neuropsychological batteries. Some scales have been very often collected (e.g. MMSE), and some have been only collected in a handful of cohorts (e.g. MoCA, or Boston Naming Test). A recent article from collaborators in Newcastle (https://doi.org/10.1002/dad2.12453), has shown that it is possible to impute some of the missing cognitive scores, by leveraging information and items from the collected scores. Such imputation would be highly beneficial to boost power of downstream neuroimaging analyses. The student will perform and evaluate the neuropsychological score imputation, on some of our available cohorts. The project would include application of machine learning techniques, and interpretation of the prediction algorithms (i.e. which items are used in imputation). Beyond an efficient imputation, validation of the prediction algorithms based on the theory of cognitive processes, would increase confidence in the imputation process.

This research project addresses the critical role of training programs for physiotherapists specialising in pelvic health, a field of practice that involves internal techniques via the vaginal or the anorectal canal. Despite the importance of these techniques for treating conditions such as incontinence and pelvic pain, global training methods lack standardisation, potentially impacting physiotherapists' practices and quality care. This study aims to identify training methods and their influence on physiotherapists' proficiency, self-efficacy, and comfort in performing internal techniques. In collaboration with the Physiotherapy Committee of the International Continence Society, we plan to conduct a comprehensive survey involving over 400 physiotherapists worldwide. This survey, capturing both quantitative and qualitative data, will also allow the exploration of physiotherapists' views on training methods and the identification of other elements that may influence their practices. By mapping the diverse training landscape, this project will contribute to the advancement of knowledge in pelvic health physiotherapy. The findings will provide insights into the impact of training methods on practitioners' capabilities and perceptions, allowing us to recommend methods based on contextual considerations. Ultimately, this research seeks to enhance professional practices and standards in pelvic health physiotherapy.

Additional comment: Supervisors are Dr Marie-Pierre Cyr and Professor Paul W. Hodges.

Identification of genetic and environmental risk factors for mental health disorders

Supervisor: Prof. Eske Derks, group leader of the Translational Neurogenomics Group at QIMR Berghofer and provisional psychologist

• https://www.qimrberghofer.edu.au/our-research/mental-health-and-neuroscience/translational-neurogenomics/

Background: Mental health disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety, substance use) are the leading cause of global disease burden in the young adult population. The Translational Neurogenomics Group aims to identify genetic risk factors for a range of mental health and substance use disorders, and investigate the interplay between genetic and environmental risk factors.

What do we offer: A position in a dynamic research environment and the opportunity to conduct high-quality studies and be part of a successful research team. QIMR Berghofer is a world leader in the field of psychiatric genetics. In joining our lab you will get access to the unparalleled UK Biobank, among other large-scaled datasets through (inter)national collaborations.

UK Biobank is a major national and international health resource with the aim of improving the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of serious and life-threatening illnesses. UK Biobank recruited 500,000 people that have since been assessed on thousands of different measures. Extensive information on mental health has been collected in a subset of 150,000 individuals.

Potential projects: We have expertise spanning multiple disciplines, including biology, genetics, statistics, psychology and psychiatry, hence we can offer a wide range of honours projects that are tailored to your interests. Some example projects:

1. Substance use and substance use disorders (SUDs) are explained by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Exposure to traumatic experiences, particularly in childhood, has been linked with both substance abuse and dependence. Why do some people who have been exposed to trauma develop SUDs and others do not? Is this link stronger in people with a genetic predisposition to SUDs? This project will investigate the interaction between genetic liability to substance use and traumatic experiences in the UK Biobank.
2. A network approach to psychopathology is an alternative way of conceptualising mental illness. A disorder is conceptualised as a system of interacting relationships between symptoms, rather than the set of symptoms resulting from a single latent factor (the disorder). This project will conduct a network analysis of depression using symptom-level data from the UK Biobank. Networks will be estimated for groups with a high vs. low genetic predisposition for depression in order to determine whether genetic risk is associated with differences in psychopathological network structure

Student profile: We are seeking a highly motivated student with a strong interest in statistics and quantitative studies. If you are interested in conducting your honours thesis with us, please contact me via email (Eske.Derks@qimrberghofer.edu.au) so we can discuss where your interests lie and some possible projects.

Dr Nadeeka Dissanayaka is a Senior Research Fellow leading the Neuro Mental Health research program within the Clinical Neurosciences theme at the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research. She is an adjunct research fellow at School of Psychology, UQ, and Department of Neurology, Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospital. Dr Dissanayaka is a current recipient of the NHMRC Boosting Dementia Research Leadership Fellowship and Lions Medical Research Fellowship. Her research involves multidisciplinary areas ranging from basic science (eg: pharmacology, physiology, genetics) to clinical science and medicine (eg: epidemiology, psychology, psychiatry, neurology, neurosurgery, cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging and addiction).

Dementia and Parkinson's disease are key areas of Dr Disssanayaka's research. Her primary research themes include:

1. Diagnosis and Treatment of Anxiety and Depression in Dementia

2. Neuropsychiatric Manifestations in Parkinson's disease including anxiety, depression, cognitive dysfunction, sleep and impulse control disorders.

Research Interests

• New diagnostic methods to identify anxiety in dementia and Parkinson's disease

• Neuroimaging (EEG and fMRI) and psychophysiological markers

• New psychological treatments using innovative technologies such as telehealth, virtual reality and mobile phones

• Novel psychosocial interventions in residential aged care facilities

• Adverse effects of pharmacological treatment including prescription of psychotropic medication in elderly

View Research Projects

I have a background in Social Psychology, HRM and Industrial Relations and Organisational Psychology so my areas of research interest are pretty broad; I can therefore supervise a range of different fields and topics. Generally speaking though, for psychology honours students I would be best suited to supervise those who are interested in psychological issues, processes and problems in the work-place as an applied setting. I have worked in a range of research areas which would lend themselves to potential honours projects. This includes social identity processes in the work-place, employee identity in post-merger and acquisitions, organisational justice, employee voice, employer branding and employee perceptions of employer reputation and organisational CSR credentials.  

I have worked a good deal in the area of HR analytics and employee responses to Digital HR systems. HR analytic teams in organisations are increasingly hiring organisational psychologists because of the high level of statistical competency found in the org psych area and the natural focus on employee psychological states (e.g. motivation and well-being etc) that a psychologist will bring as a lens. As such students who might be interested in moving into this area would benefit from working on projects in this area and I have a solid understanding of this field.   

I am currently working on a range of projects that crossover with organisational psychology and HR. For example employee responses (positive and negative) to HR practices, employee responses to digitised HR systems that interface with the work force, employee responses to digitised performance monitoring and metric systems, issues around digital applications in the work-place (e.g. AI systems). I am also working on a project that looks at employee (and potential employee) responses to gendered employment experiences. 

I am happy to chat with those interested in focusing their honours topic on psychology in the work-place. 

I am a post doctorate research fellow working in the general area of social psychology. I have extensive industry experience having worked with refugees and asylum seekers, public policy and social services especially in multicultural communities with a focus in Muslim communities. I am currently exploring two projects, one in domestic and family violence and the other in behavioural change in culturally and linguistically diverse communities using Word-of-Mouth as a marketing strategy . I also have research expertise in gender, advocacy and activism, and a general interest in leadership behaviour.

I am keen to supervise student in any of these areas and work to develop your ideas into a research project.  Please reach out and have a chat about your interests.

I use a mentoring style in my supervision drawing on academic knowledge and my industry experience to enrich your learning and professional development. 

The Chameleon Effect is a form of behavioural mimicry, where an individual non-consciously copies the gestures, behaviours, or mannerisms of the individual they are socially interacting with, without being prompted to do so (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999; Heyes, 2011; van Schaik & Hunnius, 2016). For example, this may involve the spontaneous, nonconscious touching of one’s own face or shaking of one’s own foot, elicited by the nonconscious observation of an interactive partner performing a similar action. While the Chameleon Effect has been thought of as a robust phenomenon, very limited work has aimed to replicate the seminal finding (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). As such, the current study will aim to replicate and extend on the Chameleon Effect in adult participants. If this paradigm is successful in eliciting behavioural mimicry, future studies may be able to apply this paradigm with increasingly younger populations to explore when this form of copying behaviour first appears in development. Overall, this work is necessary to bridge the gap between adult and developmental research areas and contribute meaningfully to the existing literature on this topic.

I'm a researcher and clinical psychologist at the UQ Business School. My research uses quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate how people survive and thrive, using an applied social psychological perspective. Focal areas include:

• mass gathering events like Schoolies, cold water swims, and protests;
• social identity, risk-taking, and health;
• professional identities and how people manage workplace exposure to pain and suffering;
• workplace disclosures and optimal responses;
• crisis responses by services such as health, police, ambulance, mental health services; and
• how people engage with everyday science concepts like heritability, vaccination, and mental health and wellbeing (i.e., folk beliefs). 

Honours projects for 2023 can examine:

• Social psychology of Schoolies celebrations - professional identities, help seeking, group perceptions, risk and distress
• Mass gathering events and identity enactment (LGBTQA+ events, youth mass gatherings)
• Barriers and facilitators of wellbeing support in the context of workplace exposure to pain and suffering
• Something original you might like to explore within the concepts and contexts above.

These projects can involve systematic or scoping reviews, novel data collection, as well as utilising pre-existing datasets. You'll have the opportunity to pitch your own ideas and collect additional data alongside the team. If you're interested or would like to know more, you can contact me at l.ferris@uq.edu.au

Welcome to Honours 2024!

Social cognition refers to our ability to detect, understand and respond to social and emotional cues in our environment. Strong social cognitive skills are important for effective social interactions, which in turn have implications for broader health and well-being. My research primarily examines how social cognitive abilities change across the adult lifespan, with a particular focus on older adulthood (i.e., 65 years +). To find out more about my research, please visit my UQ Researchers page. 

This year, I am available to supervise up to three projects focused broadly on social cognitive ageing or emotion. While I have three specific projects I'm interested in running (as detailed below), I am also open to students bringing their own ideas and working together to come up with a project. If you have an idea for a project that might be suitable, please send me an email (s.grainger@uq.edu.au) to arrange an opportunity to discuss the idea further.

Below are the details for three projects I am interested in running this year:

1) Do we continue to see illusory faces when we get older?

Humans are highly social creatures and consequently we are hardwired to rapidly perceive faces in our environment. However, sometimes we see illusory faces in everyday objects. This phenomenon – referred to as face pareidolia– has been reliably demonstrated in younger adult cohorts. While we know that normal ageing influences many aspects of social functioning (including human face perception), it is unclear whether ageing also influences our tendency to perceive illusory faces. This project will investigate for the first time, how ageing influences face pareidolia, using a combination of explicit (i.e., behavioural ratings) and implicit (i.e., facial EMG) measures.

2) Does the age-related positivity bias exist in the real world?

Older adults often report greater subjective well-being compared to their younger counterparts. One mechanism that has been proposed to account for greater well-being in older age is an age-related positivity bias in cognitive processing, whereby older adults attend to and remember more positive information compared to negative information (Reed et al., 2014). However, all of this research has relied on highly artificial lab-based computer tasks, which lack ecological validity (i.e., they fail to resemble the real world). Therefore, it remains to be seen whether this well-established positivity bias exists in real world environments, which are afforded with added complexity. This project will provide the first direct test of whether the positivity bias in older age emerges in the real world, using state-of-the-art wearable eye-tracking glasses. 

3) Do older adults perform better on social cognitive tasks when they feel someone is watching them?

There is a large literature showing that older adults perform more poorly than young on measures of social cognition (e.g., emotion perception, theory of mind, see Grainger et al., 2023). One explanation for these age effects is age-related changes in motivation – that is, older adults are simply not motivated to expend their limited cognitive resources on tasks that are not meaningful to them (see Henry et al., 2023). Indeed, most social cognitive tasks involve participants sitting by themselves in a research laboratory, looking at images of strangers, and pressing buttons on a computer to make responses, which, is very different to engaging social cognitive abilities in a real social interaction. This project aims to provide a more ecologically valid assessment of older adults' social cognitive abilities, using a novel experiment that manipulates the degree to which participants feel they are in the presence of real people.  

If you are interested in any of the above projects or would like further information, please send me an email. 

I look forward to chatting with you soon :)

Broadly, my research is on basic processes involved in visual perception, and factors influencing the combination of visual and auditory inputs (i.e. multi sensory perception). These topics span the categories of perception, neuroscience, and cognition. I use psychophysics and other behavioural measures to probe these areas. I am currently interested in two themes of research. Each theme has the potential of generating several research questions and experiments. Therefore, each theme can be the starting point for several Honours theses. I have outlined them below.

Theme #1

Spatial acuity of form defined by short range apparent motion versus luminance defined form.

When we look around the world, we see objects against their backgrounds. This seems like a trivial statement. However, on closer examination, it is a complex problem for the visual system to parse an object from its background. For example, what constitutes an object and what constitutes background? One obvious way we can parse objects from their background is by luminance contrast – the difference in brightness between the object and the background. For example, building standards require that warning markers for stairs or those textured makers on footpaths must be at least 30% brighter or darker than the surrounding surface to ensure they are clearly visible. However, luminance contrast is one of five ways form can be rendered visible against a background. The other four include colour contrast where an object’s colour is visibly different from its surround; texture contrast where the texture pattern on an object is visibly different form its surround, motion contrast where any motion within the boundary of an object is visibly different from its surround, and binocular disparity contrast where the depth of an object is visibly different from its surround. 

Short-range motion defined form is an interesting version of motion defined form. However, it has been studied less extensively than motion defined form. More specifically, existing studies on spatial form defined by short-range motion (SRM) predominantly focus on the conditions necessary to yield the perception of a discrete form. However, the spatial acuity for forms defined by SRM is still unknown. This project seeks to measure spatial acuity for objects made visible through a single iteration of SRM and compare them with thresholds for luminance defined objects. Participants will view random-dot patterns where a central rectangular section is made visible through SRM or luminance contrast and indicate whether the central rectangle was vertically or horizontally oriented. This is called aspect ratio discrimination and is a measure of spatial acuity (like reading a letter chart for visual acuity). In the SRM condition, two random-dot patterns will be presented in rapid succession. The surrounding dots are identical in the two presentations. However, the central section is shifted horizontally, making it briefly visible through short-range motion SRM. In the luminance condition, mean luminance contrast of the surrounding random-dot stereogram dots is increased/reduced to make the central section discernible. We will need to run control experiments to take stimulus duration of the luminance condition into account and equated to the perceived duration of the SRM stimulus.

This project relies heavily on psychophysical methods like the ones you learned about for assignment #1 in NEUR2020.

See Grove, P.M. & Regan, D. (2002) for a sample paper. A full reference can be found on my staff page.

Theme #2

Resolving ambiguity in visual motion perception.

A critical role of perception is to identify and track objects as they move around us. For example, ice hockey players must identify the puck and track it as it moves around the rink. This is complicated by the fact that the puck is often occluded from vision by other players. Therefore, the perceptual system must track the puck and preserve its identity through this intermittent visibility. Without this tracking, we would experience the puck as popping into and out of existence at random. The brain relies on multiple sources of information to facilitate coherent perception of objects moving around a cluttered environment. Transients such as sounds, flashes, and perturbations of motion signal collisions which result in changes in trajectories of the objects, and so the hockey player may be able to better anticipate the puck’s future location based upon multiple sources of information.

One way to investigate our ability to track objects in the world is to conduct controlled psychophysical experiments using simple events as a stimulus. One example of this is the stream/bounce effect. It is a well-known phenomenon that has illustrated how transients such as those mentioned above can influence object tracking. However, after 25 years or so of research, there is still no agreed upon explanation of this phenomenon. Some researchers claim it is a purely perceptual phenomenon, others argue for a cognitive or inferential process, and still others argue that the transients disrupt attention in some way that disrupts the tracking of objects.

The goal of this project is to probe the stream/bounce effect in multiple ways so that we can test each of these accounts and find out which one best accounts for the data. Thereby, contributing to our knowledge of object tracking in a dynamic environment.

We will achieve this goal by conducting psychophysical experiments that measure the influence of auditory and visual transients on our perceptions of simple computer-generated movies of objects moving on a screen. We will be able to compare participants’ responses across several conditions with predictions from different accounts of the stream/bounce effect.

See Grove, P.M., Robertson, C. & Harris, L.R. (2016); Adams, K & Grove, P.M. (2018); A-Izzeddin, E. & Grove, P.M. (2020) for example papers. Full references for these can be found on my staff page.

General Comments:

You do not need any specialised knowledge of visual or auditory perception, psychophysics, computer programming, or neuroscience. Your background from NEUR1020, NEUR2020, and any of the cognitive or sensory neuroscience electives will be a great starting point. Regular lab meetings throughout the year provide the basics on all these topics. You will have all the tools you need to write up your thesis.

Student Tasks/Responsibilities

• Comprehensive literature review
• Critical review of project design
• Power analysis (to determine an adequate sample size)
• Preparing ethics amendments as required
• Pre-registration of the project (standard open science practice)
• Pilot testing
• Graphing preliminary data
• Data collection (running psychophysics experiments – one participant at a time).
• Statistical analyses (descriptive, t-tests, ANOVA)

The project I am supervising this year will be on waves in brain activity ('neural oscillations') and how they modulate low-level visual perception.

Neural oscillations are a ubiquitous aspect of brain activity. Properties of these 'brain waves' have been shown to predict performance in a number of perceptual and cognitive domains, in both health and disease. In this project we will seek to understand the source of these relationships by determining the influence neural oscillations have on the basic building blocks of perception, and modelling these influences to determine the computations that are mediated by neural oscillations. In particular, we will be testing the use of a brain-computer interface for triggering stimuli based on oscillatory brain-state (e.g., when the waves are high vs. low amplitude), to allow us to probe more precisely the influence of these waves on attention and perception. 

This will be an EEG project involving human testing, that will be undertaken at the Queensland Brain Institute.

If you have any questions about the project, please email me at: anthmharris@gmail.com

This year, I am interested in supervising Honours projects on the following topics:

1. Remembering to remember. Don’t forget to feed the dog! Have I remembered to take my medicine? The successful completion of many tasks in daily life relies on the core cognitive skill of prospective memory (PM). Surprisingly, despite lapses of PM accounting for more than half of all daily cognitive errors, little is known about ‘real-life’ PM function. By using my team’s ground-breaking MEMO app – which is a world first in allowing PM function to be assessed in participants’ actual, daily lives –projects are available that will allow us to establish when, why and how real-life PM function breaks down at different stages of the adult lifespan, and what strategies most effectively prevent this from occurring. Specific projects will address key questions, such as:

• What are the key determinants of real-life PM function?
• When and why do specific types of PM error occur?
• What determines error awareness in daily life?
• How do different strategies influence specific types of PM error risk?

2. Individualised virtual reality. Virtual reality (VR) offers an immersive and ecologically valid solution that has the potential to transform the diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of many clinical disorders. Pilot data using our novel individualised VR (iVR) approach shows it has the potential to enhance self-compassion and lower depressive symptoms. Honours projects are available that will allow further assessment and evaluation of this iVR approach, addressing such questions as:

• Are the potential mental health benefits of iVR equivalent at different stages of the adult lifespan?
• Is the efficacy of iVR at improving mental health related to the degree of avatar demographic similarity (e.g., age, gender and/or ethnicity)?
• Are the effects of avatar demographic similarity mediated by one’s perceived sense of embodiment towards the avatar?

3. Self-directed ageism. In a world in which youth is idealized, ageism against older adults is both prevalent and problematic. A major survey commissioned by the World Health Organisation found that every second person in the world holds at least some ageist attitudes – and perhaps surprisingly, this often includes older adults’ themselves. Self-directed ageism refers to the tendency to internalize negative ageist beliefs and apply them to oneself. Relative to external sources of ageism, self-directed ageism appears to be experienced more frequently in older adults’ everyday lives and is more strongly related to their mental and physical wellbeing. Projects are available that address questions such as:

• What features of our social environment contribute most strongly to self-directed ageism, in terms of both strength and duration of effects?
• Are social interactions most important, and if so, does it matter who our social partners are during these interactions, or where the interaction occurs?
• Or are environmental features more important, and if so, are messages that promote youth just as damaging as those that devalue age and aging?

I am also open to other project suggestions that focus on cognitive ageing, social cognition, or prospection more broadly.

To learn more about my research please visit my personal profile page (Professor Julie Henry - UQ Researchers), and if interested in joining the lab, please contact me directly (julie.henry@uq.edu.au) to set up a meeting.

I am a Postdoctoral research fellow at the Parenting and Family Support Centre. My research focuses on the socio-ecological conditions to foster children's capacity to thrive and flourish in the constantly evolving world. Current projects include:

Thriving Kids Project is centered on examining protective factors that enhance children's readiness for the future, addressing critical issues like climate change, mental health, inequity, and discrimination. This multifaceted project encompasses two research streams:

Stream 1 delves into individual, interpersonal, community, and societal factors contributing to children's resilience and their role in fostering a socially just society.

Stream 2 explores innovative methodological approaches for societal change, aiming to mobilize collective efforts toward creating a nurturing and supportive environment for children. This involves the application of implementation and prevention sciences.

Digitalization of Professional Training focuses on understanding the mechanisms of change that lead to the success of a public health approach to professional training programs for child and family practitioners in the digital era.

In collaboration with an honours student, my role involves identifying research topics, designing studies, and conducting research that contributes to these overarching programs.

I am excited to connect with students. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me at a.phuong@uq.edu.au. I welcome any inquiries and look forward to engaging with you on these compelling research endeavors.

I'm involved in research into driving safety with a particular focus on hazard perception skill (my claim to fame is that I have published more papers on hazard perception than anyone else in the history of the known universe, according to Web of Science). My team created the hazard perception test used for licensing in Queensland between 2008 and 2021, which, as part of the graduated licensing scheme, was linked to a 10% per reduction in novice crashes per year. We have also created a hazard perception training course that has been found to reduce dangerous incidents (e.g. heavy braking) in real driving (as measured using dashcams).

I will be taking on up to two individual honours students this year. Here are some ideas for the sort of studies we might do (subject to students' input):

1. How to improve hazard perception without requiring trainees to speak.

Most of our current validated techniques for improving hazard perception involve trainees talking aloud. This might restrict their use in certain populations, including those who might need hazard perception training the most (e.g., drivers recovering from head trauma). In this project, we want to develop and evaluate a new technique for improving hazard perception that does not require verbal production. 

2. Malleable individual differences that affect hazard perception

A number of individual differences are known to amenable to change and might hypothetically impact driving behaviour, including cognitive flexibility, locus of control, and ability to delay gratification. In this study, we will examine which of these variables impacts crash-related drivers' behaviour using our validated battery of video-based driving tests (hazard perception, speed choice, gap acceptance, following distance). If any do then it potentially opens a new route to improving driver safety by targeting these variables with interventions.

I'm a research fellow at the Institute for Social Science Research and I have a research background in intergroup social psychology and currently dabble in quantitative social science and public health more broadly. My research interests lie in leveraging quantitative and longitudinal methods to look at and track gender role attitudes and gender dynamics. My research interests also extend into social outcomes for family members of people with chronic conditions, and the social determinants of health and evaluations of social and health policy. 

I have a lot of experience using and analysing secondary data, particularly longitudinal survey studies of social attitudes and outcomes.

I'm happy to take on any students with a particular interest in the interaction between gender and social and/or health outcomes (or one or the other!)

Are you interested in understanding how human perception of taste and smell affects eating behaviour and their roles in health and diseases? Are you interested in learning about how to apply statistical methods to large-scale high-dimensional data to distinguish causation from correlation? If so, you are looking at the right place!

I am an ARC DECRA Fellow based at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience. My research interests are in the areas of genetics and sensory nutrition. I develop and apply statistical methods to identify genetic and environmental factors contributing to individual differences in taste and olfactory perception, and to understand their impacts on eating behaviour and chronic conditions. Here are two The Conversation Articles about my work. I am also leading several international collaborative projects in this space, including one consortium study investigating the influence of COVID-19 vaccines on long-COVID symptoms. 

About honours projects, I have a few ideas in mind including:

• Taste and olfactory genes and eating behaviour
• Perception of fragrance and mental health
• Covid-19 vaccines and long-Covid symptoms
• Pitch your own!

All projects are computer-based as I use existing data collected by myself and collaborators or from Biobanks. 

Opportunities for PhD Scholarship and publications are available. Let's have a chat :)

In 2024, I will be supervising three honours students in the individual thesis stream on the following topics:

1) How do accents influence the way we perceive and treat others? 

From the first few months of life, infants prefer to listen to and look at people who speak with a native accent. This preference for native-accented speakers carries on into childhood and even across adulthood; for example, pre-schoolers prefer to be friends with native-accented children and employers show strong bias for native-accented job candidates. Although the prevalence of accent-based prejudice and discrimination is now becoming increasingly more evident, what actually drives this form of bias is relatively unknown.

I am interested in working with students who would like to investigate the social-cognitive underpinnings of accent-based prejudice and discrimination in children and/or adults. Some questions we can look at are:

• Do accents influence our ability to take each others' perspectives?
• What are some implicit cues hidden in our day-to-day interactions that perpetuate accent-based prejudice and discrimination?
• How do children develop the understanding of societal norms against accentism and other forms of prejudice?

I am happy to discuss any other ideas on the topic of accent-based bias that you may have. If the concept of accentism fascinates you, I'd love to have a chat!

2) Meta-analytic review on a topic of mutual interest

If you have an interest in a specific topic with approximately 20 or more studies in the existing literature, we can work on a meta-analytic review of that topic. I have supervised several meta-analyses in the past and will provide guidance and training on each step of the process (i.e., no previous experience or knowledge required). Some meta-analysis topics I've supervised include:

• Links between theory of mind and real-world social behaviours (e.g., prosocial behaviour, bullying, lying, popularity)
• Effect of accent on children's and adults' social preferences
• Risk of childhood trauma on chronic pain in adulthood
• Association between social connectedness and depression
• Empathy across development
• Effect of screen media on children's executive functioning

If you are interested in conducting a meta-analysis, please let me know what topic you'd like to investigate.

I will be at the Honours Meet and Greet on Wednesday 24th January. If you are interested in working with me, please come chat with me at the session and/or email me (k.imuta@uq.edu.au), so that we can get to know each other a little bit.

I am a Senior Research Fellow at ISSR (at Long Pocket), and I have a background in Health Psychology. 

My research interests span equity, life course transitions and health and wellbeing. I currently undertake a lot of contract research for Government Departments (at state and federal level) in Australia, on topics related to education, equity, communities and families. I am currently undertaking some evaluation work relating to the health and nutrition of school-aged children, and could supervise an Honours project around the implementation of healthy food and drink in Queensland school tuckshops, and the perceptions held by the school community around healthy food and drinks served in Queensland schools. 

Catherine's House Centre for Mothers and Babies (Mater Mothers Hospital) will be offering one honours individual thesis project in 2024.

Catherine’s House is Queensland’s largest perinatal and infant mental health centre, providing specialist mental health assessment and treatment to mothers, babies and families with mild to severe mental health difficulties. The service comprises a range of inpatient and outpatient services.

This research project is an opportunity to experience applied clinical research, within a dynamic multidisciplinary mental health team. As a part of a broader service evaluation project, we have a variety of projects available with existing ethics approval, and we would be interested in discussing the students interests and research strengths in order to select a project that is suitable and interesting. Broadly, these projects aim to explore how clients of Catherine’s House improve in clinical outcomes over time, and uncover the experience for mothers and family members.

This project will be co-supervised between Dr Grace Branjerdporn, Service Development and Research Team Leader at Catherine’s House (PhD, BOccThy (Hons I), CHIA | Honorary Associate Professor - Bond University | Honorary Research Fellow - Mater Research Institute, The University of Queensland); and Dr Hayley Kimball, research officer at Catherine’s House (PhD, Masters of Clinical Psychology, UQ).

I’m a postdoctoral research fellow at the Queensland Cerebral Palsy and Rehabilitation Research Centre, part of the Child Health Research Centre, located next to the Queensland Children’s Hospital in South Brisbane.

I’m primarily interested in applied and intervention-based research in child and family health and wellbeing. In particular, my work focuses on supporting and building the capacity of the adults who directly influence children’s learning and development (i.e., parents and teachers). In 2024, I’m keen to supervise up to two Honours students on projects centred around understanding and improving teacher wellbeing through trialling an online workshop developed by allied health practitioners. 

Please note that I will be away from the 23rd to the 28th of January and am unable to attend the meet and greet session. I’m happy to chat with any potential students before January 23rd, please send me an email (g.kirby@uq.edu.au) if this area of Honours research is of interest to you!

My areas of research are in the fields of social, moral, and environmental psychology. I am interested in supervising projects on the following three topics (and I'm open to any related topics that you may be interested in):

The Psychology of Climate Change

The world is facing an unprecedented crisis as climate change poses a serious threat to humanity. Psychological factors play a critical role in shaping public opinion and policy outcomes. A deeper understanding of how people perceive, react to, and engage with the issue of climate change can lead to more effective interventions and policies. I’m particularly interested in the factors that lead individuals to endorse systemic changes aimed at limiting climate change. For example, in previous studies, we have found that perceiving one’s country as wealthy and perceiving one’s country as unequal increases people’s support for systemic solutions to climate change.

Moral Concern for Biodiversity

With the escalating urgency for biodiversity conservation, the need to understand our individual and collective responses to biodiversity loss is becoming more critical than ever. In this project, we will study the factors that influence people's concern for biodiversity. For example, we will explore the psychological mechanisms through which people show moral concern for biodiversity.

The Psychology of Meat Consumption

Encouraging people to cut back on meat can be a challenging task, often meeting resistance and sometimes even backfiring. In this research, we aim to explore alternative strategies that focus on structural elements (e.g., subsidising plant-based food) to see if they can help encourage people to eat less meat. Instead of relying on traditional persuasion methods, we will investigate whether seeking people's support for such structural changes could be a more effective way to reduce overall meat consumption.

I have a strong background in organisational psychology with specific research interests in work design, work redesign interventions, remote and hybrid work, and employee wellbeing. I seek to understand how we can promote good quality work to allow individuals and organisations to thrive. I have an applied focus so am best suited to supervise those who have an interest in psychological issues or processes in the workplace.

Supervision approach:

• I encourage starting early and being organised and responsible for your own progression (e.g., setting regular goals, communicating what support and guidance you need from me). I am happy to provide advice and feedback on this process throughout.
• I find that initially meeting weekly is helpful, and then as needed as time progresses. This will be guided by you and your needs.
• There may be periods during the year when I am on leave or travelling interstate / internationally. I expect students to be able to work independently in my absence (I will usually still be available via email).

If you have questions, please email caroline.knight@business.uq.edu.au

Psychology Honours Projects 2024:

The Self-reference effect and the Sense of Self

When we think about ourselves – what we like, don’t like, our skills, and our social relationships – we delve into autobiographical memories of what we did and how we felt during specific life events.  That is, our sense of self is tied to information that we can recall that is referenced to ourselves (Conway, 2005).

We can show this experimentally through the learning and recall of new information: we tend to recognise it more accurately when it is related to ourselves (my mug, my apple) than information that is related to another person (Cunningham et al, 2008, Rogers et al 1979). This is the typical Self-reference effect (SRE).

Our recent work has shown that it matters who the other person is. When the other person is stranger, the SRE is strongly evident. However, when the other person is known to us we know a lot of information.

In these projects, we will vary the identity of the self in relation to the other (for example, self-celebrity, mother-child, friend-friend) to investigate whether the SRE, and hence the sense of self, is stronger in the context of a close or distant social relationship.

We anticipate that participants for these experiments will probably be recruited and tested online.

Multisensory Integration in near and far space within immersive environments (Virtual Reality)

In daily life, we have to deal with an overaload of information - visual, auditory, touch etc. We have to integrate this information and work out where it is in space, and what object it is producing it. For example, seeing and hearing a dog barking far away, versus a cat meowing within our reach. 

We integrate and respond to information that is within our reach faster and more efficiently than information that is far away. Moreover, the representation of space immediately around our head is specialised for processes threatening information (eg fast approaching tennic ball that might hurt us).

The problem is that these concepts have been investigated with computer monitors, in 2-dimensional contexts. With new Virtual Reality technology, we are able to approach these questions by investigating behaviour within a naturalistic, immersive 3-dimensionla context.

Research profile:

UQ page: https://www.psy.uq.edu.au/directory/index.html?id=1180#show_Research

ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ada_Kritikos

I'm a Research Fellow through the UQ HERA GROWTH program (Groups and Relationships to Optimise Wellbeing and HealTH) broadly interested in social connection and health. I work with Prof. Cath Haslam and A/Prof. Magnolia Cardona to translate the evidence-based GROUPS 4 HEALTH (G4H) program across diverse populations and settings. My research involves co-designing, implementing, and evaluating practical social connectedness interventions to prevent and manage loneliness. 

In 2024, we will integrate G4H into the middle school curricula to support young people transitioning to high school, and later, adulthood. This is part of a broader program of work that aims to support people to stay socially connected as they navigate life transitions (e.g., retirement) and periods of social isolation (e.g., COVID-19).

I welcome Honours projects in the following areas: 

• Targeted intervention (e.g., for a particular population)
• Social connectedness/loneliness in rural Australia
• Promoting social connection through behavioural feedback
• Meta-analysis on an agreed topic related to social connection

Depending on the project, my students may be co-supervised by Implementation Scientist A/Prof Magnolia Cardona. 

Please get in touch if you're interested in learning more about this research, or if you'd like to discuss your own project ideas: cj.larue@uq.edu.au

I am a researcher in the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences conducting research in sport psychology and sport coaching. I am looking to supervise students for the following research project.

Project Summary: Olympic Games, Paralympic Games, World Championships, and World Cups of various configurations are the pinnacle performance contexts for the vast majority of sports supported by the Australian Institute of Sport. Representative Coaches—Coaches who "represent" Australia at international events (e.g., Olympic games)—are known to be key to successful performance outcomes, yet despite this critical performance of the coach, Representative Coaching remains poorly understood and severely lacking in support. Accordingly, in co-construction with Athletics Australia, Basketball Australia, the Australian Institute of Sport, and the Queensland Academy of Sport, this project seeks to gain applied understandings of the varied dimensions of work that Representative Coaches undertake in the pre-, during, and post-pinnacle sporting events.

I am a research fellow at the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research. My research program is centred around the epidemiology of substance use, with a particular focus on youth vaping and illicit substances. I am especially interested in leveraging social media data to monitor and address the emerging threat of youth substance use.

I have expertise in a range of statistical methodologies including survey designs, clinical trials, meta-analysis, survival analysis etc. I have published in excess of 90 peer-reviewed publications in the field of addiction and mental health (Google Scholar: >7.4K citations, h-index = 35, 31% output in top 10% citation percentile). You can find more information about what i published here: https://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/10985 

I am currently seeking 2 highly motivated honours students for the following projects:

1) Portrayal of substances (e-cigarettes) on social media 

Youth vaping is a present and urgent public health threat that has garnered global attention. Global efforts made to prevent youth vaping are hindered by the proliferation of pro-vaping content on social media platforms. This project will involve some recruitment of participants and data collection to examine the influence of pro-vaping contents (i.e., celebrity/influencer marketing) on vaping-related behaviours.

2) Medicinal cannabis marketing in Australia 

The domestic cannabis industry has blossomed in recent years due to the increased in demand and regulation reform. This project will involve some data collection and qualitative data analysis on medicinal cannabis advertisements in Australia to understand the marketing practices and regulatory compliance by the cannabis industry. 

Potential students can also generate their own research questions (on illicit substances and social media). 

Feel free to get in touch (c.lim@uq.edu.au) to discuss more about the projects above. 

Research area: Educational psychology/learning sciences

Overarching research problem: Understanding how people learn and how learning in and outside of educational environments can be enhanced. 

Technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) have provided great opportunities for accessing information and learning in the 21st Century. The use and development of these technologies exploded during the pandemic and are poised to evolve rapidly as AI advances. However, along with these developments have come many questions. What do easy access to information and AI tools mean for acquiring and updating understanding? These are the questions we are addressing in the Learning, Instruction, and Technology Lab.

I am an associate professor of educational psychology in the School of Education. I have supervised or co-supervised over 40 research students, the majority of whom have been in psychology. I lead the Learning, Instruction and Technology Lab, where you will have the opportunity to work with a team of experienced researchers, postdocs and PhD candidates all working in the learning sciences and educational psychology.

The central focus of our research involves examining self-regulation and metacognition with and alongside technologies, including AI. Various methodologies are being employed in this research from lab experiments to qualitative and experiential studies. The broad paradigm is use-inspired basic research, this means that there is scope for qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods studies.

Key questions in our research are:

- How do people use AI to learn and get feedback on their progress towards understanding?
- How do people develop sophisticated conceptual understanding in digital and informal learning environments?
- How can metacognition and self-regulation help people progress in their learning, particularly in digital and informal learning environments?

We are looking to work with students who have a genuine interest in learning and education.

Please note: we don't do any research on the clinical aspects of educational psychology (e.g. dyslexia, maths anxiety, learning difficulties). 

I lead the Neurogenetics and Dementia group based at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Herston, where we focus on the genetic epidemiology of Alzheimer's disease, and the identification of biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease.  

Dementia is the greatest cause of disability in Australians over the age of 65 years. In the absence of a significant medical breakthrough, more than $6.4 million Australians will be diagnosed with dementia in the next 40 years. The most common form of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease (AD), accounting for 60-80% of cases. The pathogenic process of AD begins decades prior to the clinical onset, so it is likely that treatments need to begin early in the disease process to be of benefit. Therefore there is an urgent requirement for the investigation of the AD process at the earliest stage, before clinical symptoms. Aside from the use of extensive longitudinal studies, prodromal changes are difficult to investigate. Available projects include using known genetic risk factors to identify those at a high risk of developing AD, where a high proportion of individuals will be in a prodromal stage of AD. Data will be available from the PISA (Prospective Imaging Study of Aging) Study (Lupton et al. 2020). There will be opportunity to investigate genetic risk factors for AD in healthy individuals and test for associations with extensive phenotypic data including co-morbid conditions and traits, neuroimaging, cognition, and blood based methylation markers. Significant associations will identify disease markers that represent early prodromal brain changes before the clinical onset of AD. 

I am a Lecturer in clinical psychology. I am interested in understanding the cognitive, emotional and behavioural mechanisms that underlie psychopathology. My research focuses primarily on investigating mechanisms associated with adaption or failure to adapt to bereavement, loss and other potential traumatic events. This includes a focus on autobiographical memory, future prospection and emotion regulation processes.

My projects apply experimental paradigms from social and cognitive psychology with healthy, clinical analogue and clinical populations. I also undertake experience sampling studies (ESM, also known as ecological momentary assessment) to investigate emotions and behaviour in real life setting

One line of research is focused on investigating the mechanisms that underlie emotion regulation outcomes. This includes experimental  and longitudinal investigations of the role of stressor controllability on emotion regulation outcomes, and emotion regulation in daily life using experience sampling methodology. 

A second line of research involves investigating the mechanisms underlying clinical dysfunctions in autobiographical remembering and future-related imaginings. This line of research investigates how manipulating autobiographical recall, future imaginings, and self-identity constructs impact on mood, decision making and current functioning. 

My honours projects typically involve student or online populations. However, if you are already working with a clinical population I would be happy to discuss a project.

Some project areas include: 

Emotion regulation and coping with stressors:  Theoretical models of emotion regulation increasingly incorporate the role of context and individual difference factors as important determinants of wellbeing.  However, empirical evidence is lacking. This wider project is applying multiple methodologies to test predictions from some of these models.  Methodologies include survey questionnaires, ecological momentary assessment/ experience sampling methodology (EMA/ESM) to examine the context specific effectiveness of regulation strategies and emotion regulation goals in real life, and laboratory studies examining context specific regulation outcomes. 

• If you are interested in EMA, please note that data analysis (is fun!) but requires the use of multilevel statistics.  This approach is for someone who likes or is interested in learning statistics,

Self-identity processes in response to change:  Theoretical models argue that adapting to significant life changes involves modifying aspects of self-identity to reflect the new reality.  This line of research investigates different facets of self identity (e.g. content, structure and process) and the relationship with emotion regulation, mental health and well being outcomes. 

Episodic foresight allows us to mentally project ourselves into the future, and subsequently act in adaptive future-oriented ways; and it is thought to be a uniquely human ability. However, research has found that this essential ability declines as we age. Given how critical episodic foresight is in our day to day lives (think planning dinner or setting a reminder to take medication), a decline may have significant implications for quality of life. This program of research is focused on understanding how emotions impact episodic foresight and involves use of an electronic board game known as the Virtual Week - Episodic Foresight task.  It may involve some modification of the programming of this task

In 2024, I am interested projects in supervising research projects focusing on improving the recruitment and retention of donors of substances of human origin (e.g., blood donation, faecal microbiome) or changing perceptions in cases of sexual violence.

1. Intervening to promote donation.
   1. Blood donation is a highly affective behaviour and donors report a range of emotions both in anticipation of and because of donating. Despite this, the role of affect in promoting donor retention has been largely overlooked.  Projects in this area will consider whether nostalgia can be used to encourage lapsed donors to return, or gratitude can improve the recruitment of non-donors.
   2. Word of mouth is regarded as the most cost-effective method of recruiting new donors, however with the business literature the sense of self-discovery has been linked to consumer loyalty, satisfaction and intentions to engage. How effectively (or not) does self-discovery in relation to donating blood work when compared to word of mouth?
   3. Faecal microbiota transplant (FMT) donors are in increasing demand.  Yet poo is a core disgust elicitor, that we are unlikely to overcome in this context.  So how can we work with disgust to encourage people to explore whether they would be eligible to donate?  In this study we will explore whether we can use compassionate messaging to encourage people to take the first step to becoming a FMT donor. 
2. Changing perceptions in cases of sexual violence
   1. Victims of sexual assault are perceived as less credible when they delay reporting their assault than when they report immediately. However, research has not considered whether providing a reason for the delay affects perceptions of credibility. In this study we will explore whether providing additional details as to why a delay in reported occurred reduces the negative impact of delayed reporting on perceptions of victim credibility.

About me and my laboratory:

My interests are within the broad area of Cognitive Neuroscience, with a particular emphasis on understanding the neural bases of attention, prediction and decision making.

If offered a place you will become part of a large research team, with several fellow students plus numerous research fellows and research support staff. You will have an opportunity to learn one or more of the following experimental methods: functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), psychophysics and human neuropsychology. I am particularly keen to hear from students who wish to continue with a career in cognitive neuroscience research.

You can find out more about my lab and our research here: https://sites.google.com/a/uq-qbi-cogneuro.com/mattingley-lab/

My laboratory is based at the Queensland Brain Institute (on the St Lucia Campus). This is where you will undertake your research, attend weekly lab meetings and become part of a dynamic team working to understand brain function in health and disease. You will receive all necessary training in relevant brain imaging and/or brain stimulation techniques, and you will  develop a high level of proficiency in these techniques by the end of the honours year. We always endeavour to publish the results of honours projects in a peer-reviewed journal.

I am offering several research projects in my lab in 2023. These projects will investigate how brain activity gives rise to our ability to pay attention to incoming sensory information, to make predictions about future sensory events, and to make optimal decisions based on our perceptual experiences.

If you are interested in working with me for your honours project in 2020, please get in touch via email as soon as possible: j.mattingley@uq.edu.au

I am a social scientist working for the University of Queensland's Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR), based on the Long Pocket campus. My research interests are in the area of domestic, family and sexual violence and refugee and migrant studies, with a particular focus on not-for-profit organisations and government policies addressing DFSV interventions.

Project - 'Learning About Transformative Justice Through Refugee and Migrant Communities: An Evaluation of the Family Peace Building Program'

I have a current project that is evaluating a program addressing domestic, family and sexual violence in refugee and migrant communities. The 'Family Peace Building Program' is a group facilitated by a network of refugee and migrant service which aims to build up the capacity of communities to respond to DFSV through training community leaders and bi-cultural support workers. The broader evaluation is largely a qualitative study, using interviews and observations of pre-recorded groups as method. However, I have an additional project that has recently been funded to develop a methodological framework for the organisations to continue evaluating their program after the initial evaluation is complete. This project will be largely quantitative and focus on the design and trial of a survey to measure participant's attitudes towards gender equality and domestic, family and sexual violence pre and post group intervention. 

As part of a wider team, students might contribute to the following tasks: Survey design and data analysis · Participate in workshops with stakeholders to articulate program logics and survey design · Thematic analysis of the qualitative interviews as part of the broader evaluation of the Family Peace Building Program, including coding supported by NVivo · Literature review, including systematic/scoping review · Contribute to the final report · Contribute to peer reviewed journal articles and other published outputs. 

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UQ’s Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR). I am interested in men’s health behaviours including their access of health services and help-seeking. In particular, I am interested in the role of masculinity ideals and masculine norms in men’s health behaviours and health service use. Part of my PhD research utilised the Australian longitudinal study of men’s health Ten to Men, which encompassed three timepoints over seven years (Wave 1, Wave 2, Wave 3). Two papers from my PhD using the Ten to Men data have been published or accepted for publication so far. 

In November 2023, Wave 4 of Ten to Men was released, offering some potential rich new insights into Australian men’s health, including gender norms. I would like to offer an Honours student the opportunity to work with me to either extend on my findings from the Ten to Men dataset using this latest data release, possibly focussing on a specific subgroup of men/males, or to develop their own new line of investigation using this rich secondary data. Understanding and basic knowledge of statistical analysis and quantitative research would be necessary to work with the dataset. 

A bit about me: I am a post-doctoral research fellow at the UQ Poche Centre for Indigenous health with a background in social psychology. My supervision style involves weekly meetings, realistic project goals and timelines, open discussion of research interests, and student driven study development (I am open to alternative project suggestions related to the topics suggested below).

About the research: For 2024, I am particularly interested in exploring perceptions and experiences of 'sex ed' programs targeted towards adolescents (age 10-19). Key elements of my interest in these education programs revolve around culturally safe and comprehensive delivery of information related to consent, healthy relationships, and prevention of STI transmission and acquisition.

I have projects exploring students (or recent former students), parents, and teachers experiences and perceptions of sex and relationships education received through secondary schooling or other institutions, with special consideration of whether these programs were or are inclusive of diverse perspectives and experiences as below:

1. Young adults experiences and perceptions of their sex and relationships education received through their secondary schooling or other institutions with a particular focus on when this content was inclusive of the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experiences and perspectives and other diverse experiences related to gender, sexuality, ability, culture, and language.

2. Educators perceptions of the adequacy of their training, resources, and implementation support to deliver comprehensive sex and relationships education to their students.

I am also working on projects exploring consent/non-consent and partner violence recognition and the way in which different beliefs can help or hinder recognition, positive responding, and where appropriate, bystander intervention.

Exploring the genetic basis of depression

About me: I am a researcher in the Psychiatric Genetics lab at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. My research has a strong focus on human genetics and how genes may contribute to a wide range of mental health disorders. I am particular interested in mood disorders, with most of my research to date focused on depression aetiology.  

About this project: One in five Australians will be diagnosed with depression in their lifetime, and approximately one third of those will not respond to treatment. While some progress has been made in understanding the role genetics plays in risk of depression, there is still much more understanding needed to elucidate the biology of disorder. We are particularly interested in exploring whether genetics plays a role in how people experience depression, the extent to which genes may play a role in how people respond to treatment and the relationship between depression and other mental health disorders. This will encompass exploring depression features, such as age of onset, recurrence, and the differences in depression risk factors between males and females as well as treatment response variables such as medication efficacy and side-effects. 

Methods: We already have access to national and international large-scale genetic data sets (N=20,000 and N= 500,000 respectively) which collected data on depression risk, features, medication response including efficacy, tolerability, and adverse side-effects as well as psychotherapy response. The student will employ a range of statistical genetic approaches to interrogate these data and to determine the genes and pathways underlying depression-related traits as well as explore the relationships between depression and other phenotypes.

This project will be co-supervised with Professor Sarah Medland, head of the Psychiatric Genetics lab at QIMR

My research looks at parenting and parenting interventions to prevent and treat child behavioural and emotional problems. Honours projects in 2024 will focus on:

1) development and validation of measures of gender neutral parenting.

2) assessment of children's home environments to examine similarities and differences between boys' and girls’ rooms. 

3) explore parent views on gender neutral parenting and examine parents needs and preferences for information and support.  

Key citation: Morawska, A. The Effects of Gendered Parenting on Child Development Outcomes: A Systematic Review. Clin Child Fam Psychol Rev 23, 553–576 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-020-00321-5

Students who work with me undertake projects that typically focus on the development of social-cognitive skills with a broad view on their possible role in young children’s attainment and transmission of culturally bound behaviours.

Some broad project ideas for 2024 include (but are not limited to):

• Children's recognition of, understanding of and engagement in ritual behaviours.
• The complementary and conflicting roles of imitation and innovation in the development and transmission of cultural and functional behaviour
• Children's developing tool-use skills
• How and what children learn from digital devices (tablets, smart phones, television etc)
• The association between young children's pretend play behaviour and individual differences in creative thinking
• Are social motivations more important to children than material rewards?

I am an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at the School of Psychology and a Group Leader at the Centre for Advanced Imaging (CAI) within the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN). I am primarily interested in the interaction between brain changes and mental illness, particularly depression and complex trauma.
In 2024 I am supervising honours projects in two areas:

1.) the first set of projects investigates whether vascularization (blood supply) of subcortical brain areas such as the hippocampus and ventral tegmental area (VTA) are related to cognitive performance and depression, respectively. Students are not expected to have prior neuroimaging experience but will have to learn basic neuroimaging analyses techniques (under my supervision) for the successful completion of their projects.

2.) the second set of projects is based on the UK biobank dataset https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/. Students will be able to investigate their own research question around the topic of childhood adversity and trauma. Experience with R Studio or basic programming skills will be of great advantage for these projects but are not a requirement, as long as students are willing to learn how to perform statistical analysis in R Studio for the successful completion of their projects.

Students are strongly encouraged to attend weekly lab meeting, where we will have the opportunity to discuss the progress of their individual projects and troubleshoot any problems they may encounter. Please note that while no data collection will be required for any these projects, new techniques and intensive analyses of neuroimaging/ large datasets will be required.

I will be at the meet and greet on the 24th of January. If you are interested in working with me, please introduce yourself, so we can have a brief chat or send me an email if you can't make the meeting: l.oestreich@uq.edu.au

The following project(s) are available:

Homelessness in older women

Ageism on university campuses: the effect on students and staff

Regional and remote issues around driving cessation in later life

I'm an organisational psychologist and my research focuses on employee well-being. 

In 2024 I will take 1 honours student. We will work on a larger project funded by the Australian Research Council, together with my masters/PhD students, a postdoc, and other collaborators. More specifically, we will work on experience sampling studies about how employees manage their energy during work (i.e., via micro breaks, other work-related strategies) and recover their energy after work (i.e., via recovery activities in the evening). There's always scope for students to bring their own ideas and unique focus to any project.

Supervision approach:

• I like data collection to start early, as early as possible. Let's meet asap, get focused, and get data collecting by March/April.
• I like meetings to be weekly when we get started, but then 'as needed' once we get into the swing of it (and 'as needed' meetings can be as regular as the student/project requires).
• I like students to set their own goals and let me know what support/guidance they need. I can definitely give advice and feedback on whether the goals are realistic/appropriate and whether the goals will help you stay on track during the honours year.

During 2024, there will be short periods when I am interstate or on leave, so any student will need to be able to work independently (albeit it also supported by being part of a larger team). If you have any questions, please email me at s.parker@psy.uq.edu.au. 

My research interests lie in the field of emotional face processing and awareness from a cognitive neuroscience perspective.

Current projects address visual and spatial processing of faces that vary according to their social and emotional features. For example, is our attention really attracted to emotional faces? Does awareness come first or is attention attracted before awareness? 

This year (2023), I will be supervising one Honours project in which we will examine the efficiency to detect an emotional face in the peripheral visual field, when visibility is limited by a cluttered environment.  The question will be addressed through an experiment that measures behaviour (reaction times/errors) and electrophysiological (surface EEG) variables. The aim of the study will be to determine how much awareness we have of the emotional faces when it appears in the peripheral field, and we will try te determine whether awareness precedes shifts in spatial attention. 

Project 1:

We are seeking an honours student who would be interested in contributing to an ARC Linkage project: Enhancing Children's Journey in Out-of-Home Care (OOHC): A Multi-Perspective Study. This is a longitudinal qualitative study exploring the social and emotional wellbeing of children (1-12 years) in OOHC from the perspectives of children, the parents, and their carers. A central element of the study was to gain the perspectives of birth parents of children currently in the out-of-home care system. Despite a varied range of recruitment strategies that have been employed over an 18 month period, it has been challenging to engage with this target group and only 20 parents have been recruited. One of the primary strategies for recruiting birth parents has been via the project's partner organisations, but despite initial optimism for this approach, we have achieved little success.

The honours project would involve undertaking interviews or focus groups with representatives from the project's partner organisations. The goal is to systematise what we have been told informally, so that we can assist other researchers and our industry partners in future project design. Using individual interviews and focus groups, the research team proposes to engage with senior leaders, mid-level management and frontline workers to explore the perceived reasons as to why the engagement of birth parents has been so problematic. In doing so, we hope to gain perspectives from multi-levels across the organisation, to obtain a systems view that is important to understand how factors (from relationships between parents and carers or workers through to organisational factors) impact relationships with and the recruitment of birth parents.

Project 2:

Through Horizon grant funding, a team of researchers at UQ developed a parent engagement toolkit for schools. We would like to use secondary data (e.g. School Opinion Survey data) to understand the efficacy of this intervention. We also developed a Small Private Online Course to enhance parent engagement in schools, we have collected data from 6 schools that agreed to be part of a pilot and this needs to be analysed together with School Opinion Survey to assess the efficacy of the SPOC.     

Please also review my UQ researcher profile for more information on the projects I work on and interest areas: https://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/12612 and reach out if you have a project idea that I may be interested in.

My research focuses on the development and evolution of complex cognitive capacities. I seek to understand how children and non-human animals think about possible events, how they think about their own thinking (i.e., metacognition), and how they learn from others. I'm flexible with Honours projects, and I'm happy to supervise a study at the intersection of our interests. However, please note that most projects will involve working with children in the range of 4 to 11 years.

In recent years I have supervised projects in two main research areas:

1. Thinking about Possibilities: Thoughts about possibilities are fundamental to what makes us human. Recent studies from our lab suggest that, from around 4 years of age, children begin to imagine and prepare for alternative future possibilities (Redshaw & Suddendorf, 2016; Redshaw et al., 2019) and understand the logical relationship between such possibilities (Gautam, Suddendorf, & Redshaw, 2020). From around 6 years of age, children also begin to think about "counterfactual possibilities"—events that could have happened in the past but did not—and this thinking influences their emotional experiences and moral evaluations (Gautam, Suddendorf, & Redshaw, 2022; 2023; Jones, Gautam, & Redshaw, 2024). Potential Honours projects could examine how children's ability to think about future and counterfactual possibilities influences their cognitive performance or social judgements.

2. Cognitive Offloading: Humans routinely extend our minds and make thinking easier by manipulating the external environment (Clark & Chalmers, 1998). We take notes, set alarms, and use calendars to aid and augment our memories, we turn to calculators when faced with difficult mathematical problems, and we use GPS to navigate through both new and familiar territory. Recent studies from our lab suggest that children first begin to deploy such "cognitive offloading" techniques during the preschool years, and throughout middle childhood they become increasingly flexible in deciding whether to offload or go it alone (Armitage, Bulley, & Redshaw, 2020; Armitage & Redshaw, 2022; Bulley, McCarthy, Gilbert, Suddendorf, & Redshaw, 2020; Redshaw et al., 2018). Potential Honours projects could examine the causes and consequences of such cognitive offloading behaviours in children.

I am a cognitive and clinical neuropsychologist with a joint School of Psychology and Queensland Brain Institute appointment. My Neuropsychology Research Unit investigates both theoretical questions about cognitive processes and clinical questions about assessment of cognition in neuorlogical disorders.

Honours projects in 2024 could focus on any of these areas:

1. Analysis of spontaneous speech in healthy and pathological ageing (i.e., dementia).

2. Cognitive projects focus on the interface between executive functions and language expression, for example, adderessing questions like 'How do think of something to say and then produce your idea aloud?'

3. Clinical projects focus on cognitive test development and validation. For example, the Brief Executive Lanaguage Screen (BELS) has been developed and is currently being validated in acute stroke and dementia. 

You can find out more about me and my group at: https://qbi.uq.edu.au/robinsongroup

If you are intersted in working with me for your Honours project then please email me asap: gail.robinson@uq.edu.au

I am Senior Lecturer in Clinical Geropsychology, I teach into the Honours program in semester 1 (seminar course) and semester 2 (The Scientist Practitioner Model). My area of research expertise primarily addresses topics related to ageing and dementia, e.g. ageism, dementia stigma, and my NHMRC-funded projects have focused on dementia and driving disruptions.

For example driving disruptions have significant impact on people living with dementia, their care partners and family members, and health professionals that manage fitness to drive. In 2024, I am interested in exploring the experience of grief and loss related to relinquishing a drivers licence after dementia diagnosis.

Another project focus I am interested in is the impact of self-stigma and age-related stereotypes (stereotype embodiment theory) on health and wellbeing, especially in the context of ageing, and/or across generations.

My UQ Researcher Profile lists some publications of interest around these topics http://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/11436

As an Honours supervisor,  I provide early guidance, scaffolded support, and I like to set ongoing, and achievable goals to help students meet submission time frames.

Some of my current projects suitable for Honours students in 2024 are on the following topics:

• How people resist injustice in everyday life
• Racism in Australia in the aftermath of the Voice referendum
• Non-indigenous Australians recognition of colonialism
• Diversity and bias within psychological science

If any of this sounds interesting to you, please email me and we can schedule a time to chat!

My research interests are broad and in the fields of Emotion, Health, Music, and Social Psychology. Much of my research involves interdisciplinary or cross-cultural collaborations, with links to the UQ School of Law, Medicine, and external organisations and universities. I am currently working on research related to domestic violence and community initiatives to reduce loneliness.

This year, my honours supervision will be focused on connection to nature as a way to increase health, wellbeing, and restore attention. This project will involve external collaborators with honours students facilitating guided walks. The project may involve the collection and analysis of psychophysiological data. 

Exploring compassion and self-compassion, shame and self-criticism, depression, anxiety and stress, among various populations.

The work being undertaken in 2024 will involve a cross-sectional, correlational study via Qualtrics. The projects will be conducted in collaboration with Dr Marcela Matos at University of Coimbra, Portugal, who has carried out previous research in this area.

I am interested in taking one honours students in 2024. I would like to invite students with an interest in clinical psychology to apply. I am a clinical psychologist in private practice, and as such may need to meet the student sometimes at my offices, either in Morningside or Newmarket, however, I will be available to come to UQ on some Mondays. Hopefully we will be able to have joint supervision sessions via Zoom with Dr Matos at times throughout the year, especially for advice regarding statistical analyses. If you have any queries, please feel free to contact me by email.

I have the following research project planned for 2024 that would be well suited to students interested in applying for a Masters in Health Psychology, Masters in Clinical Psychology or wanting to do a PhD (or other research training):

• Developing a novel AI-powered health intervention for vaping in young people.
• Open to discussing any interests students may have within addiction/cognition or the intersection of the two.

My expertise spans cognition and addiction research. Within addiction I am interested in how alcohol, cannabis and tobacco, seeking to understand behaviour, changing trends, and implementing interventions. Within the cognitive domain my work has focused on understanding emotion processing more broadly, with a focus on fear learning, utilising cognitive behavioural paradigms, functional brain imaging and psychophysiology. 

Cognitive development, Animal Cognition, Evolutionary Psychology

Research interests as described in PSYC3262: Evolutionary Approaches to Human Behaviour

I am supervising projects examining young children's emerging foresight (e.g. their capacity to anticipate what could possibly go wrong). I also study cognitive capacities in non-human primates. 

Primary headaches (such as migraine, and tension-type headache) are common and disabling conditions which have no pathophysiological findings on medical examination (e.g., tumour, hypertension). Instead of being caused by a defined abnormality in the body/brain, primary headaches are functional conditions elicited and exacerbated by a wide and individualised profile of triggers, commonly including stress, sleep disturbance, hormonal changes etc. Problems with sleep (including duration, quality, next day sleepiness/tiredness) are second only to stress as the leading triggers of primary headaches. This project will extend previous work on headache triggers, avoidance, and sensitivity to investigate if sleep factors act both as triggers and to moderate sensitivity to other headache triggers (e.g., glare, perfume, hunger). The prospective student on this project will be expected (under supervision) to prepare an ethics application, setup an online battery of psychological measures with two timepoints (e.g., Qualtrics, redcap, limesurvey), recruit participants, and be comfortable performing quantitative analyses including mediation/moderation.

Different areas of psychology operate at different levels of analysis. For example, neuroscience examines biology (e.g., molecules, neurons, blood flow) while social psychology studies group-level phenomena (e.g., attitudes, prejudice, leadership). Clearly, some levels of analysis are more suitable for addressing particular research questions than others. As cognitive scientists, we investigate thinking itself. We examine mental processes including learning, memory, perception, attention, insight, language, reasoning, bias, problem-solving, and decision-making. To understand how the mind works without directly observing these internal processes, we employ experiments, simulations, behavioural measures, and diverse analytical methods and statistical techniques. The cognitive science approach allows us to contrast what people “say” they remember with what they actually remember, whether people believe they are biased versus whether they demonstrate bias, and whether (mis)information that “feels” genuine is in fact true. My lab page below overviews some general themes emerging from our research over the years, including a list of students and projects I have supervised.

For more information, visit tangenlab.com

My interests cut across a number of fields but I am broadly interested in face perception and social intelligence in humans and other animals. My previous research has used a variety of different techniques including behaviour (psychophysics), eye-tracking, neuroimaging (fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG) and single unit recordings. See http://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/32114 for more information. 

In 2024 I will be supervising honours projects on the following topics: 

(1) The biological basis of the face pareidolia illusion. 

'Face pareidolia' is the illusion of facial structure on an otherwise inanimate object (such as a green pepper or the moon) - these illusory faces falsely activate the dedicated face-selective regions in our brain. But how does this brain activity influence our behaviour? Does everyone experience face pareidolia? Do machines that are trained to detect faces also "see" face pareidolia?

(2) Does an increased social connection to pets rewire our visual system?

Although numerous studies have demonstrated that primates have a dedicated network of brain regions for processing face stimuli, we do not yet understand what stimulus properties and affordances drive activity in these regions. I am particularly interested in understanding whether pet ownership or extensive experience working with animals changes the geometry of the neural representations underscoring face perception. 

(3) Investigating the causes of prosopometamorphopsia. 

Prosopometamorphopsia is a rare neurological condition that can occur following stroke or brain injury. Patients living with prosopometamorphopsia often perceive faces as being heavily distorted and "melted". Interestingly, damage to face-selective visual usually results in hemi-face distortions, suggesting that the left hemisphere processes the right side of a face stimulus while the right hemisphere processes the left side of a face stimuli. Our goal would be test this theory in lab using standard psychophysical paradigms. 

You will receive all the necessary training in the relevant behavioural and/or neuroimaging techniques. If you are interested in working with me for your honours project in 2023, please get in touch via email as soon as possible: j.taubert@uq.edu.au. I am especially interested in hearing from students who are thinking about a career in social neuroscience. 

I am the Curriculum Development Leader at the Parenting and Family Support Centre. I am also a registered Clinical Psychologist. 

My current research is in the field of parenting and family, and specifically with the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program. My research has included intervention research on Triple P programs and factors related to delivery of Triple P by trained practitioners. 

I will be taking one Honours student in 2024.

My research aims to improve the accuracy of forensic science procedures that identify people and convict them of crimes. I focus primarily on face identification where staff must verify the identity of an unfamiliar person, such as in a criminal investigation, at border control, or in an anti-terrorism surveillance operation. This work involves developing evidence-based training, comparison methods, and recruitment tools, understanding what drives expertise in face identification, and optimising how humans and facial recognition technology work together to identify people. I also do some research in other forensic science disciplines.

I will be supervising 3 honours students in 2024 on the following topics:

1) How accurate is face identification in live police manhunts?
2) What are the cognitive mechanisms underlying expertise in face identification?

Please get in touch if you would like to chat about these projects in more detail: a.towler@uq.edu.au.

I will be supervising three honours students in 2024.

In the UQ Social Neuroscience Lab, we use various psychophysiological measures to examine emotional and cognitive processes involved in social interactions.  Although informed by recent findings in neuroimaging, honours projects are typically done without people being put into an fMRI scanner.  To heighten experimental realism, the laboratory has available interactive software programs so that participants become highly involved in the experimental procedures.  Recent studies conducted by students in the lab have examined the effects of being the source or target of ostracism, implicit prejudice and discrimination, trust and motor mimicry, event-related potentials, empathy, and Facebook use. Specific topics for 2024 will likely centre on the reactions people have to (a) social media and (b) robots (we have a robot in the lab!). Honours students are required to attend weekly lab meetings with my PhD students and other research assistants and have individual supervision appointments. 

What about my honours supervision style? I realise that most new honours students are undertaking their first big research project, so early on, I try to help them develop a realistic schedule with a set of goals that we assess at our weekly individual meetings. It will be essential to have your study planned well enough, including your proposed analyses, so we can pre-register your study before data collection begins. Once data collection has begun, we will meet individually less often until it's time to analyse the data. By the end of the year, I hope my students feel they can work more independently. I also like to improve students' writing skills whenever possible, so some of our lab meetings will also cover those skills. To this end, each student must have a copy of the APA publication manual. 

Please be sure to contact me if you have any questions or would like to meet in person before you choose your supervision preferences.

Cheers,

Eric

Does selenium supplementation alter neural plasticity?

Neural plasticity is the capacity of the brain to rewire its networks in response to stimulation by learning and experience or following damage such as stroke. One way by which the brain can enhance plasticity is via the lifelong generation of new neurons (adult neurogenesis). We have recently shown that dietary supplementation with the trace element selenium can increase adult neurogenesis in the hippocampus and enhance hippocampus-associated spatial learning and memory function during physiological ageing and following stroke.

Other types of neural plasticity, such as changes in dendritic complexity or dendritic spine density and morphology also affect neural plasticity and subsequently mediate learning and memory function.

In this project we will investigate whether selenium treatment has plasticity enhancing effects beyond its effect on adult neurogenesis by addressing the following aims:

1. Does selenium enhance dendritic complexity and spine density of neurons in vitro?
2. Does selenium enhance dendritic complexity and spine density of newborn neurons in vivo in the young and aged hippocampus?
3. Does transgenic disruption of selenium transport alter neural plasticity?

I am a lecturer in Health Psychology and part of the Lives Lived Well Research Group and SIGN. My research looks at in psychosocial factors that impact people’s mental and physical health, particularly in vulnerable or socially disadvantaged populations. In 2024, I am able to supervise 3 Honours students. 

My current research includes projects investigating transdiagnostic risk and protective factors (such as self and emotion regulation, social support, group belonging and identity) in the treatment of comorbid mental health and substance use disorders. I am also interested in investigating these risk and protective factors for people’s mental and physical health in people experiencing social disadvantage.

The Lives Lived Well Group are part of the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research (CYSAR). We conduct clinical research on the assessment, understanding and treatment of primary and comorbid alcohol and other drug (AOD) use in young people. Most of this research is conducted within Lives Lived Well, the largest AOD treatment service provider in Queensland. This provides students with opportunities to conduct research and obtain experience in real-world clinical settings. The team have a number of clinical projects available for honours students in 2024. Please get in touch for more information.

Feel free to email if you had any questions or were interested in working with me.

Dr Mikaela Wheeler is a lecturer in the School of Public Health and has clinical and research expertise as a dietitian-nutritionist in residential aged care and community settings. Using mixed methods and co design methodology, her research focuses on improving the lives of older people through system design to tackle imminent problems including poor nutrition, social isolation, loneliness, and specialist care for people living with dementia.

Combatting ageism: A content analysis of the Australian media’s portrayal of older adults

Within Australia, recent events such as the Royal Commission into Residential Aged Care Quality and Safety, the Covid-19 pandemic and various elections have meant that older adults, particularly those in residential aged care, have been a large focus of traditional and social media. The type of language, and imagery used, plays an important role in influencing public perception and the discourse surrounding older people. For older adults, ageist stereotypes impact their ability to access to health services and engage with the community to maintain a life that is purposeful and meaningful. This project aims to use content analysis to understand how older adults are portrayed in the Australian media and how this contributes to ageist stereotypes, impacting the health of older adults. This project also aims to explore positive views of ageing and how we can use a strengths-based approach to challenge some of the dominant prejudices.

My research takes a strengths-based approach to improving the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I use mixed-methods designs that incorporate Indigenous research methodologies and decolonial approaches in community, health service, and higher education research.

I mainly work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, adolescents, and families that have experienced traumatic events and/or injuries. However, I also work with health professionals, outreach program staff, and other disadvantaged children and adolescents.

My current projects are:

• Co-designing a social and emotional wellbeing and suicide prevention program with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people.
• Evaluating the effectiveness of a suite of burns prevention and first aid resources targeting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. 
• Helping evaluate an Indigenous Hospital Liaison Officer team

I will be taking on one Honours student in 2023 and look forward to meeting you. 

I am offering two seperate Honours projects in 2022, each examining a different aspect of multisensory perception using psychophsical methods.

Perception is multisensory, and the separate sensory modalities interact and integrate to create a coherent, unified perceptual experience. Multisensory perception enhances our ability to understand our environment and enables us to better interact with our surroundings. First, the different sensory modalities have different fields of operation (up close for touch and taste, while vision and hearing can tell you about things in the distance) and they can substitute for one another when individually comprised (you can still hear in the dark). By combining information about the world from multiple sensory cues, our brains can create novel, more complex representations like flavour, and resolve perceptual ambiguities since two different objects that may look similar, may sound totally different. Importantly, combining information from multiple sensory cues improves both the detection and discrimination of stimuli.

The first project will look at the effect of crossmodal correspondances (CMCs) on the cueing of visual spatial attention. In particular, whether the lightness/pitch CMC can act as an exogenous attentional cue. This project will involve a few experiments developed and run using Matlab, and presented on a standard PC. Participants will make speeded responses to cued visual targets and reaction times across a number of experimental conditions will be compared. 

The second project will also look at reaction times to targets. The redundant targets effect describes the observation that participants are faster to respond to stimuli in one modality if the stimulus is paired with another stimulus in a different modality. This project will investigate if stimulus value influences multisensory integration in humans by examining the effect of reward on the RTE. This project will also involve a few experiments developed and run using Matlab, and presented on a standard PC. Participants will make speeded responses to audio-visual targets and reaction times across a number of experimental conditions will be compared. 

Please email me if you would like detailed project descriptions.

I’m interested in mate preferences and choices, physical attractiveness, intelligence, humour, personality, masculinity-femininity, sexual behaviour, and how these relate to sexual selection and the evolution of the human mind. 

My work examines social psychological theories in applied settings such as the workplace. For example, my main area of research examines stereotype threat, or the concern that one is the target of demeaning stereotypes. Stereotype threat can undermine motivation and lead to acute performance deficits. My research has focused on factors that lead to feelings of stereotype threat in the workplace, the different ways that people cope with these feelings, and the consequences for people who feel stereotyped at work. I have examined stereotype threat among women in male dominated professions, older employees, and men in female dominated professions.

Here are some common questions I receive and their answers:

• "Do I have to come up with my own idea?"

I do not expect students to come up with their own project (though you are welcome to do so). Rather, we will work together to design a project that takes advantage of my expertise that is of interest to you.

• "What is your supervisory style?"

This is a tough question to answer, so I asked some former students and here's what they said...

“Courtney is people/relationship oriented. She is very approachable (so I don’t feel like anyone would have worries about asking questions) but also students have to be proactive in keeping to the deadlines that she gives if they want to do well”

"Courtney has high expectations for her students and expects them to be self motivated and to meet regular deadlines”

"Courtney teaches the practical skills (ethics forms, creating a timeline for research and data collection, recruiting participants, survey prep etc.). She will help you set a timeline and provide you with all the information you need - from writing your research question to writing your conclusion."