Postgraduate Prospectus

Psychology | www.essex.ac.uk/psychology
Rachel Grenfell-Essam,
Clacton-on-Sea, Essex
– BSc Psychology ’08,
MSc Psychology ’09,
PhD Psychology
I decided to study at Essex
after attending an open day
as I felt at home and was
impressed by the excellent
research ratings. I have always
been interested in psychology and my
interest continued to grow throughout
my undergraduate and postgraduate
studies. This made the decision to
continue with my PhD at Essex easy.
I really enjoy the freedom I have in my
PhD. I particularly like designing my own
experiments, running them and analysing
the results in my own work space. I also
have an extremely supportive supervisor
which is great. The Department is
fantastic and the staff are always friendly
and helpful. I also enjoy helping out as
a teaching assistant in several classes
and lectures.
I really like the compact layout of the
campus, everything you need is within
five minutes walk, from the offices to
the library and the SU Bar. There is
also a great atmosphere and student
vibe here; I have always felt safe when
walking through campus at any time
of day or night.
My best memory so far was when I was
told my first paper was accepted into a
journal, it was such an achievement.
Once I have completed my PhD, I would
love to become a lecturer. Essex is one
of the leading universities for research,
so completing a research
degree here will stand me in
very good stead.
Student
profile
Riccardo Russo, BA Milan, MSc Sussex,
PhD Pavia (Professor)
The neuropsychology of memory; the
organisation of long-term memory; the
effect of anxiety on memory and attention
Andrew Simpson, BSc Sheffield, PhD
Cambridge, BSc Birkbeck, PhD
Birmingham (Lecturer)
Executive functions in young children;
development of artefact knowledge and
action learning
Christine Temple, BSc St Andrews,
MA California, DPhil Oxford, C Psychol
AFBPsS (Professor)
Developmental neuropsychology including
disorders of language, memory,
perception, reading, arithmetic and
executive functions; genetic disorders:
Turner’s syndrome, Klinefelter’s
syndromes, Williams syndrome
Ayse Uskul, BA Bogazici, MA Vrije, PhD
York, Canada (Senior Lecturer)
Cultural differences in social cognition and
the self, and motivation; health behaviour
change; self-regulatory mechanisms in
social cognition, social interaction and
well-being; cultural conceptions of honour
Geoff Ward, BA Cambridge, DPhil Oxford
(Professor)
Similarities and differences between
different memory tasks, especially
immediate serial recall and free recall;
general properties of episodic memory:
prevalence of recency in serial position
functions, the similarity between retrieval
and rehearsal, the forwards ordered
nature of recall, the self-limiting nature of
recall through output interference, and
scale-invariance in memory
Arnold Wilkins, BSc Exeter, DPhil Sussex
C Psychol FBPsS (Professor)
Visual perception, including colour vision
and the design of ophthalmic tints; use
of ophthalmic tints in autism and multiple
sclerosis; the response of the brain to
visual stimuli measured using near infrared
spectroscopy; lighting and its biological
effects; visual dysfunction in migraine;
photosensitive epilepsy and migraine;
reading disorders and the design of text
for children; spectral and chromatic
analysis of uncomfortable images
194 | Postgraduate Prospectus 2012