Students who have completed the PhD
Gillian Slessor
In 2009, I completed my PhD in the Aging, Cognition and Emotion Lab under the supervision of Prof Louise Phillips and Dr Rebecca Bull. My PhD project investigating adult age-related differences in basic aspects of social perception, such as following another person’s gaze, generated 4 publications. After my PhD, I was appointed to a prestigious Sixth Century Fellowship at the University of Aberdeen and also received funding to conduct a study investigating the links between susceptibility to fraud and deception detection in old age.
Sarah Parker
During my work at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN as a human factors and patient safety researcher in the Division of Cardiovascular Surgery, I used much of Steven Yule and Rhona Flin's work on patient safety and teamwork in the operating room as a guide for my research. This led to me pursue a PhD in the Industrial Psychology Research Centre, investigating surgeons' intraoperative leadership and its impact on patient safety and team behaviours. Getting the opportunity to work with internationally known and respected researchers is a huge advantage of the Industrial Psychology program at University of Aberdeen.
Bernadet Jager
After I obtained my MSc in Psychology in Amsterdam, I was fortunate enough to be accepted for a PhD position at the University of Aberdeen, which is very internationally oriented and has PhD students from all over the world. Work is quite varied: not just reading and writing, but also testing people (in a lab or off-campus), doing presentations (sometimes abroad), and minor teaching tasks (if you want). Doing a PhD is not a lonely path here: it's easy to meet fellow students, and the well-structured programme is designed to prevent you from ‘getting lost’ in your research.
Lisa Welling
For my PhD, I studied human mate preferences in Dr Jones’ lab. My work was funded by a Canadian Research Council (NSERC). I published 6 papers from my PhD research, many in high-impact journals, and often presented my work at international meetings in the USA, Japan and mainland Europe. I graduated in 2008 and went on to work as a Research Fellow on an ESRC-funded project in Aberdeen and then as a Research Fellow at Penn State University in the USA.
Students who have completed the MRes
Julie Main
After completing my Honours degree in Psychology at the University of Aberdeen, I decided to do the MRes course there because I was keen to continue my research within a well established research group in the department. Research in the Psychology department at Aberdeen is extremely varied with each lab having excellent specialised resources for conducting many different types of studies. The MRes course involved conducting a thesis project as well as attending two workshops each week in which we learned more about many different methods and techniques for research that were only briefly mentioned in my Honours course. From the course I gained a much better knowledge of the research process and the many ways in which you can go about conducting and analysing studies. After completing the MRes course I decided that I wanted to explore more areas of research in Psychology and I am currently working with the Industrial Psychology Research Centre at the same university as a Research Assistant.
Pauline Insch
I graduated from the University of Aberdeen with an MA (Hons) in Psychology in 2009. As an undergraduate I really enjoyed the research components of the degree and wanted to continue with my studies. Professor Louise Phillips secured me 1+3 years funding from the Lily Charlton trust so I could undertake a PhD looking at social function in dementia. The first year involved completing the MRes in Psychology which I found interesting, however the experience gained from the research project has been invaluable. I have now received ethical agreement from the NHS and am looking forward to moving forward with my studies.