Research Interests

I’m interested in how we form and revise our beliefs about ourselves and the world, and in how this process can derail to produce “pathologies of belief”, ranging from bizarre delusions in clinical settings, to “collective delusions” where thousands or millions of people adopt poorly evidenced beliefs. I also dabble in some other topics, for instance I have some recent projects on swearing (both in the sense of profanity and in the sense of solemn vows).

Background

I grew up in a small town in Western Australia. I studied undergraduate psychology at UWA in Perth and completed my PhD at Macquarie University in Sydney. I did postdoctoral work in Boston (Tufts University), Belfast (Queen’s University), Zürich (University of Zürich) and Oxford (University of Oxford). I also worked for a while as a clinical neuropsychologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen Square, London, and as a lecturer at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, New South Wales. I’ve been at Royal Holloway since 2010, where I head up the Morality and Beliefs Lab (MaB-Lab).

I'm also a member of the COVID-19 Psychological Research Consortium (C19PRC).