Co-Lead Dr Samantha Gregory

Dr Adam Galpin

I have been working at the University of Salford since 2007 and my research is focused on understanding how humans interact with tools and technology. My background is in visual cognition, in particular the use of eye-tracking, but I also employ a range of both qualitative and quantitative approaches to understanding how to evaluate and design technology. I have worked with a number of external partners, including the BBC, on user experience and design research projects. I am currently supervising a PhD project with the BBC on neurodiversity and creative processes. I also collaborate with prosthetists on understanding psychological factors involved in use of prosthetic arms. I am also interested in children’s digital media use. I welcome queries related to external consultancy projects across the fields of media and cognitive psychology.

Dr Simon Cassidy

I’m a senior lecturer in psychology and programme lead for the MSc Applied Psychology. I lead modules in educational psychology, post- graduate research methods and postgraduate dissertation. Most of my research can be broadly described as social cognition, how people process and use information from social interactions and how this influences their thoughts and behaviour.  In the past I’ve explored the relationship between social identity and mobile phone use and how different belief systems affect decision making, eye movement and brain activity.  My research focus right now is the psychology of resilience and the development of psychometric measures of academic resilience, the ARS-30.

Dr Nabil Hasshim

I study the cognitive processes underlying selective attention. Most of this work involves the Stroop task and is motivated by how it is the most widely used paradigm in psychology, yet the mechanisms underpinning it are still poorly understood.  My current research centres around the following ongoing debates: a) what processes are involved in interference (e.g., should models of attention include different types of semantic conflict?); b) how much of top-down cognitive control is bottom-up learning; c) the impact of different experimental designs on the measurement of these constructs within laboratory settings; and d) whether attention control manipulations can transfer across domains (such as language).

Paige Metcalfe

Joined the University of Salford in 2019 as a psychology technician. I have a specialist interest in neurostimulation, signal processing, and virtual reality. Currently, I am creating instructional resources regarding generalized linear models in R and developing algorithms to quantify oscillations in pupil diameter.

Sam Royle

I am a lecturer and specialist technician in Psychology, having originally joined the psychology team as a technician in 2015. My own research focuses on the variability in, and cognitive performance consequences of, the alcohol hangover state, however I have contributed to work in a variety of cognitive domains and using a variety of measures, including functional near-infrared spectroscopy, eye-tracking, and other psychophysiological measures.

twitter: @PsyTechSam

Dr Jamie Gillman

I am a Lecturer in Psychology and programme lead for the BSc Psychology of Sport at the University of Salford. My research interests lay in the psychology of performance under pressure and wellbeing. Broadly, my research is centred around the areas of stress and emotion, challenge and threat states, social identity, and social support. I am particularly interested in the psychophysiological reactions to a pressured situation (e.g., sporting performance, exams, presentations, interviews), and how cognitive appraisals shape the way we think, feel, and behave.

Email: j.c.gillman@salford.ac.uk

Twitter: @JamieGillman

Dr Lynne Marrow

I am a senior lecturer in psychology and programme leader for the MSc Applied Psychology (Addiction). I lead undergraduate modules in biological psychology and brain and behaviour and postgraduate modules in psychopharmacology and addictive behaviour. My main research interests have been focused on aspects of the brain’s dopamine systems and I have researched and published in the areas of movement disorders and schizophrenia, depression, the reward systems, substance misuse and aggression. I currently supervise two PhD projects; one on aspects of alcohol hangover, the other investigating perceptions of CBD oil among pharmacists and their clients.

Dr Gonçalo Barradas

I am a Lecturer in Psychology (Cognitive Neuroscience) and specialist in Clinical Psychologist, having worked closely with cases of child abuse and neglect in Portugal. My current research centers around Music Psychology and Affective Sciences, particularly the use of music stimuli for emotion induction, cognitive/motor rehabilitation, and emotion regulation and well-being. I am particularly interested in the following themes: (1) psychological mechanism underlying emotional responses to music; (2) cross-cultural differences; and (3) the impact of emotions elicited by music on cognitive and motor rehabilitation of Alzheimer patients. I have worked on several projects with the Music Psychology group at Uppsala University, Sweden. I welcome applications from students interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in music psychology, music and emotion, music and aesthetics, and cognitive neuroscience.

Dr Nilihan Sanal-Hayes

I am a lecturer in Psychology with research interests in cognitive development in infants, and cognitive function in other clinical populations such as long COVID, ME/CFS, and dementia. During my masters, my research focused on cannabis users and non-users processing of emotional information using an eye-tracker. My PhD research focused on infants’ mass perception of objects in collision events using the looking time paradigm. During my postdoctoral work, my research focused on cognitive functions of individuals with long COVID, ME/CFS, and dementia using apps. Currently, my research focuses on the cognitive well-being of individuals with long COVID , and ME/CFS using various research methods.

Researchgate:  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nilihan-Sanal-Hayes

Twitter: @DrNSanalHayes

Please see below for information about our current PhD Students and Researchers:

David Beevers

After more than 40 years in journalism, I decided to change careers and pursue a long-held fascination with psychology and motivational leadership. I was accepted onto the BSc (Hons) Psychology and Counselling course at Salford in 2018 at the age of 62 (remember, “you’re never too old, and it’s never too late!”) and graduated in the summer of 2021. I then successfully applied to join the PhD programme at the University with a project looking at the effect of individual differences on the restorative power of environments under the supervision of Dr Catherine Thompson and Dr Michael Lomas. While humans have been shown to favour nature environments over urban settings, with nature benefiting well-being and cognitive abilities, few studies have looked at how the personality of an individual and their past experience of nature affects the ability of certain nature environments to restore and replenish cognitive resources. I am also continuing to work on a study with Dr Thompson, funded by the EPS, looking at the effect of low-level spatial frequency images on perceptual fluency. 

Please see below for information about previous Researchers:

Draco Graham-Kevan

Draco worked as an intern over the summer with Dr Samantha Gregory on a project investigating the impact on joint attention on working memory in a VR environment. draco also contributed to a project creating a database of images to be used in research projects. Draco is continuing to work with VR through her dissertation and hopes to pursue a MSc or PhD after graduation.

Alishba Mailk

Alishba worked as a summer intern under Dr Robert Bendall on a project investigating “Location-Based Variation in emotional experience”. Alishba is continuing to study cognitive psychology via her dissertation. Of the internship, alishba said: ‘Overall, it was a tremendously rewarding experience for me to work on this study during my internship. It gave me the chance to learn more about data analysis methods and research methodologies. Being a part of this study has also strengthened my resolve to pursue a career in a research-related field in the future.’

James Dodds

James, a University of Salford Psychology graduate, spent 5 and a half months on an internship supervised by Dr Samantha Gregory. During the internship he assisted in recruitment and data collection, helped develop protocols for a research participant database and contributed to the creation of an image database. James is going on to do a Research Methods in Psychology MSc at The University of Liverpool.

Lucy Ferrie

Lucy, graduated from Royal Holloway University of London in 2020 with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and then went on to study a Master’s degree in Forensic Psychology. Lucy worked as a Research Assistant at the University of Salford on a project funded by the Fire Service Research and Training Trust exploring the effects of thermal stress on the cognitive functioning of firefighters.

Rukhma Younis

Rukhma graduated from University of Salford in 2021 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminology. Rukhma spent 6 months working on an internship in 2022 with Dr Samantha Gregory. Rukhma’s project examined the effect of other people’s eye movement/ eye gaze on memory of objects. The study was conveyed through a virtual reality setting with head mounted display.