Undergraduate Teaching

I currently convene the 2nd year Social and Developmental Psychology (C82SAD) module and the Masters Conversion module on Social and Developmental Psychology (C84SAD) as well as lecturing and giving seminars on this modules.
I also lecture on the 1st year Social Psychology course (C81SOC), often give guest lectures and supervise third year projects (students please see the relevant Moodle page and recent publications for topics).
Proud to say that Juan See Wen (my final year student in 2014-15) won the Jonathan Sime award recognising the significant contribution to People-Environment studies of her final year project. Amara Waqar (2015-16) received a special commendation within the Jonathan Sime award and Isobel Madle (2017-18) was shortlisted for this award.
I also lecture on the 1st year Social Psychology course (C81SOC), often give guest lectures and supervise third year projects (students please see the relevant Moodle page and recent publications for topics).
Proud to say that Juan See Wen (my final year student in 2014-15) won the Jonathan Sime award recognising the significant contribution to People-Environment studies of her final year project. Amara Waqar (2015-16) received a special commendation within the Jonathan Sime award and Isobel Madle (2017-18) was shortlisted for this award.
Postgraduate
I currently supervise PhD students:
Elizabeth Marsh
Mariana Gaytan - GDPR information for Mariana's current study on Food waste is here
Vanja Ljevar
Zoe Pallis
Daniel Fletcher
Completed PhD students:
Matthew Terrell
Liz Dowthwaite
Nandini Anant
If you are interested in working with me on a PhD project, contact me. Broadly speaking, I'm interested in projects relating to public perceptions of energy or climate change, or in relation to attitude or behaviour change in these areas. I'm also interested in risk perception more generally. See below for some more specific current research directions:
Planning sustainable behavior change
The intention behavior gap is well known across fields in Psychology and similarly whilst most people would like to behave sustainably (e.g. not many people really wants to waste energy), many do not. Implementation intentions in particular are a planning tool that have been highly impactful in Health Psychology and to date have been little used within Environmental Psychology. Initial investigations indicate that this is a very useful tool in enacting behavior change but further research is needed in order to examine the conditions under which these tools may be most usefully employed.
Acceptance, engagement, and cooperation around new energy technologies
With the current rollout of smart meters, I’m exploring how and when people are engaged by associated devices and smart energy technologies and services that build on the increased information provided by smart meters (e.g. smart washing machines, electric cars as grid storage). I’m interested in when and why people will accept new energy technologies and what benefits are perceived from interacting with these. I’m also interested in interactions and cooperation around new energy technologies and systems. There may be unintended consequences of introducing new energy technologies to social situations and environments (e.g. the workplace) that have not been considered.
Policy acceptance
To date, behavior change models do not deal with policy acceptance; it is an area generally ignored within theoretical models. However there are good reasons (coming from surrogate decision making and construal level theory in particular) to consider that policy acceptance and its drivers may differ from individual behavior change. I’m interested in examining how acceptance of policy may be different from individual changes in behavior and what this means for using behavior change data to understand policy acceptance and vice versa.
How location and context may influence digital engagement
I’m interested in how spatial location and activity may influence people’s interactions with technologies. Might people perceive information differently, and therefore also respond to this differently, when this is received when they are travelling, or when they are in a spatially distant environment compared to a static office or home environment?
Elizabeth Marsh
Mariana Gaytan - GDPR information for Mariana's current study on Food waste is here
Vanja Ljevar
Zoe Pallis
Daniel Fletcher
Completed PhD students:
Matthew Terrell
Liz Dowthwaite
Nandini Anant
If you are interested in working with me on a PhD project, contact me. Broadly speaking, I'm interested in projects relating to public perceptions of energy or climate change, or in relation to attitude or behaviour change in these areas. I'm also interested in risk perception more generally. See below for some more specific current research directions:
Planning sustainable behavior change
The intention behavior gap is well known across fields in Psychology and similarly whilst most people would like to behave sustainably (e.g. not many people really wants to waste energy), many do not. Implementation intentions in particular are a planning tool that have been highly impactful in Health Psychology and to date have been little used within Environmental Psychology. Initial investigations indicate that this is a very useful tool in enacting behavior change but further research is needed in order to examine the conditions under which these tools may be most usefully employed.
Acceptance, engagement, and cooperation around new energy technologies
With the current rollout of smart meters, I’m exploring how and when people are engaged by associated devices and smart energy technologies and services that build on the increased information provided by smart meters (e.g. smart washing machines, electric cars as grid storage). I’m interested in when and why people will accept new energy technologies and what benefits are perceived from interacting with these. I’m also interested in interactions and cooperation around new energy technologies and systems. There may be unintended consequences of introducing new energy technologies to social situations and environments (e.g. the workplace) that have not been considered.
Policy acceptance
To date, behavior change models do not deal with policy acceptance; it is an area generally ignored within theoretical models. However there are good reasons (coming from surrogate decision making and construal level theory in particular) to consider that policy acceptance and its drivers may differ from individual behavior change. I’m interested in examining how acceptance of policy may be different from individual changes in behavior and what this means for using behavior change data to understand policy acceptance and vice versa.
How location and context may influence digital engagement
I’m interested in how spatial location and activity may influence people’s interactions with technologies. Might people perceive information differently, and therefore also respond to this differently, when this is received when they are travelling, or when they are in a spatially distant environment compared to a static office or home environment?