Associate Professor in Psychology and Head of the Schools Lab. Her research focuses on children’s social cognition and social development from a cross-cultural perspective. She is particularly interested in how children across the world learn social norms, how they cooperate, and what enables them to behave ethically. Her research also branches out into topics such as children’s reasoning about nature and into more applied areas such as refugee adolescents’ resilience and well-being. She often works from an interdisciplinary angle and frequently collaborates with colleagues from different fields within psychology (e.g. clinical psychology) and outside psychology (e.g., biology, anthropology, education).
Lecturer in the School of Psychology and Lead of the MRI laboratory at the Brain Research and Imaging Centre (BRIC). She studies the influence of various social factors on decision making and learning. She is interested in understanding how choice processes develop, both from a behavioural and neural perspective.
Associate Professor in the School of Psychology. She is a multidisciplinary and mixed methods social scientist with an interest in action research that aims to improve health and social outcomes for marginalised or seldom heard groups. Her research is focused on the intersection of micro, mesa and macro issues and the integration of psychological, sociological and anthropological theory to explain how these factors interact to shape and potentially change health inequalities.
Currently Helen is working with colleagues within the school and in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Wolverhampton to investigate how social and psychological variables interact with on-line video gaming and wellbeing in children and adolescents. This research involves local schools, social sampling techniques and both qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings will be used to enhance personal, social, health and economic (PHSE) curricula and contribute to our ongoing research investigating the intersection of gaming, social media and psychosocial health. For more information, contact Helen via Email.
Associate Professor in Applied and Clinical Psychology and serves as the Director of Research for the D.Clin.Psy. programme. His research and practice interests over the past twenty years have centred on (i) addressing abuse, aggression, bullying, prejudice and violence between and against children and teenagers in educational, community and on-line settings; and, (ii) processes of inclusion, exclusion and marginalisation in education and society, especially regarding the experiences of Indigenous peoples, LGBTQ+ people, and members of alternative youth sub-cultures.
Associate Professor of Psychology, and an Associate Head of the School of Psychology. His research focuses on the skills that we use to understand and interact with the spatial world around us, ranging from small-scale activities, such as drawing, through to large-scale behaviours, like navigating a new building or town. He has studied the typical development of these abilities, as well as atypical development in conditions including autism, Williams syndrome, and hydrocephalus. By understanding the bases of spatial impairments in different groups, we can work towards the development of strategies to support people experiencing difficulty, and members of Dr Smith’s laboratory are currently exploring techniques to assist with everyday behaviour.
Graduate Students
Miss Delphine KL Nguyen is a PhD student in Psychology at the University of Plymouth, UK (2020-Present). Her research focuses on the relationship between parental screen time and young children's language development, social robots and word learning in children.
