Teaching, Supervision, and Mentoring
My teaching has been across undergraduate, postgraduate, and professional development contexts. It has focused on the broad areas of cognitive and forensic psychology, with particular focus on issues concerning memory and its disorders, and experimental and clinical hypnosis. In addition, I have supervised or co-supervised 67 students in Honours, Masters, and PhD programs. In 2011 I received Faculty and Vice-Chancellor (University level) Awards for Excellence in Higher Degree Research Supervision. These awards are for Macquarie University’s Supervisor of the Year.
Although my current appointment (and past appointments) predominantly has been research only, I always have aimed for strong contributions to teaching and supervision. My goal in this area is to help secure the long-term viability of my Department, which we will achieve in part by maintaining and further developing our strong profiles in teaching and supervision.
Lecturing and Other Face to Face Teaching
Supervision and Mentoring
My teaching has been across undergraduate, postgraduate, and professional development contexts. It has focused on the broad areas of cognitive and forensic psychology, with particular focus on issues concerning memory and its disorders, and experimental and clinical hypnosis. In addition, I have supervised or co-supervised 67 students in Honours, Masters, and PhD programs. In 2011 I received Faculty and Vice-Chancellor (University level) Awards for Excellence in Higher Degree Research Supervision. These awards are for Macquarie University’s Supervisor of the Year.
Although my current appointment (and past appointments) predominantly has been research only, I always have aimed for strong contributions to teaching and supervision. My goal in this area is to help secure the long-term viability of my Department, which we will achieve in part by maintaining and further developing our strong profiles in teaching and supervision.
Lecturing and Other Face to Face Teaching
- Undergraduate lectures: At University of New South Wales (UNSW) and Macquarie I have taught 1st and 2nd year personality and individual differences; 1st year memory and cognition; 1st year methodology; 1st year hypnosis component; 2nd year personality and social psychology, 3rd year cognitive science; 3rd year psychology and law; 3rd year personality.
- Undergraduate courses: At Macquarie I recently contributed content to Cognitive Sciences’ new multi-modal course, Disorders and Delusions of Mind (COGS201), which started Session 2, 2013. This is part of new teaching initiatives in Cognitive Science. The course features iLearn online lectures, interactive activities, lectures by experts, and face-to-face tutorials. I contributed content for Topic 9 “Modeling Delusions Using Hypnosis” (for video interview, lecture slides, online activities and assessment).
- 4th year/Honours: At UNSW and Macquarie I have taught small group Honours seminar courses (< 20 students) on repressed and recovered memory (1997), experimental and clinical hypnosis (1998-1999), inhibitory processes in cognition and emotion (2000), cognitive versus clinical concepts of repression (2004, 2006), and instrumental uses of hypnosis (2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014).
- Postgraduate: At UNSW I contributed to courses on experimental psychology and law in Forensic Masters Program.
- Postgraduate: At Macquarie I convene new MRes Units, Advanced Topics in Memory (COGS710), which started Session 1, 2013, and Advanced Topics in Belief Formation and its Disorders (COGS760), which will start Session 2, 2014. In 2014 I also contributed 2 hour guest lectures to MRes courses FoHS899 and COGS700.
- Continuing Education and Professional Development: Within the Australian Society of Hypnosis Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Hypnosis I have taught courses and workshops on hypnotisability and its measurement (1999, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010); theories of hypnosis (1999, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010); hypnosis, memory, and law (1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007); hypnosis, recovered memory, and clinical applications (1998); and foundations of experimental hypnosis (2008).
- Continuing Education and Professional Development: Within the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (USA) I have taught full day courses on research methods (2013, 2014).
- Continuing Education and Professional Development: Within the New Zealand of Hypnosis I have taught full day courses on ingredients of hypnosis: a guide to research for clinicians (2011); instrumental hypnosis: putting hypnosis to work (2011); and hypnosis, memory and the law (2011).
Supervision and Mentoring
- 4th year/Honours: A UNSW and Macquarie I have supervised empirical theses of 33 Honours students from 1996 to 2013. All received 1st class or 2.1 grades; over half continued to postgraduate studies including PhD; much of their work published in leading journals.
- Masters: At UNSW and Macquarie I have supervised research theses of 19 Clinical, Forensic and Organisational Masters coursework students from 1996 to 2013.
- Continuing Education and Professional Development: At UNSW I supervised 2 International Practicum students from the Netherlands in 1998.
HDR/PhD Supervision (completed)
I have been Primary Supervisor of 6 completed PhD students: - Rochelle Cox, graduated with her PhD from UNSW, 11th September 2007 for thesis “Autobiographical memory during hypnotic identity delusions”. Degree awarded without changes. Received Commendation from the UNSW Dean of Science and winner of the 2008 E.R. Hilgard Best Graduate Level Academic Thesis Award from American Psychological Association (APA; Division 30, Psychological Hypnosis), which is bestowed upon the author of an outstanding and important dissertation. Won a Macquarie Postdoctoral Fellowship (2009-2011; < 5% success rate) in the Department of Cognitive Science/ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD). Now holds an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (2012-2014; < 20% success rate) at Macquarie. Received the 2013 Henry Guze Award for the Best Research Paper, Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (SCEH; USA). This award is given for the best research paper published on hypnosis in any journal in the previous year. Won the 2014 Award for Early Career Contributions to Hypnosis from APA (Division 30). This award recognises excellence in scientific achievement in the area of hypnosis by psychologists who are at an early stage of their research careers. She already has attracted over $570,000 in competitive research funding from external and internal sources.
- Lynette Hung, graduated with her PhD from UNSW, 24th April 2009 for thesis “An analysis of hypnotic reading disruptions”. Degree awarded without changes. During candidature, she received four awards from international societies (APA and SCEH), including 2005 Best First Paper on Hypnosis by a Young Scientist. Winner of the 2010 E.R. Hilgard Best Graduate Level Academic Thesis Award from APA, Division 30. Now a Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology, UNSW.
- Celia Harris, graduated with her PhD from Macquarie, 9th April 2010 for thesis “Social influences on autobiographical memory”. Degree awarded without changes. Received 2008 Macquarie University Higher Degree Excellence Award and 2010 Vice Chancellor’s Commendation for Outstanding Achievement. Was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Centre on Autobiographical Memory (CON AMORE), Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark. Now a Macquarie Postdoctoral Fellow (2012-2015; < 5% success rate). She already has attracted over $670,000 in competitive research funding including a new ARC Discovery Project and funds from Alzheimer’s Australia.
- Charles Stone, graduated with his PhD from Macquarie, 5th April 2011 for thesis “Remembering and forgetting: The mnemonic consequences of selective voicing and silence in social interactions”. Degree awarded without changes. Received 2010 Macquarie University Higher Degree Excellence Award and 2011 Vice Chancellor’s Commendation for Outstanding Achievement. Held a Marie Curie Actions of the European Commission Postdoctoral Fellowship in Psychology, University Catholique de Louvaine, Belgium. Now Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, USA.
- Michael Connors, graduated with his PhD from Macquarie, 24th April 2013 for thesis “Modelling the mirrored-self misidentification delusion with hypnosis”. Degree awarded without changes. Received 2010 Macquarie University Higher Degree Research Excellence Award, 2010 Travel Award from SCEH, and Highly Commended 2011 Vice-Chancellor’s Research Excellence Awards. Received the 2013 Henry Guze Award for the Best Research Paper, SCEH, and most recently won the 2014 E.R. Hilgard Best Graduate Level Academic Thesis Award from APA (Division 30). Now a Research Associate at UNSW and Macquarie, and enrolled in a Graduate Degree in Medicine for 2014 (with plans to specialise in Psychiatry).
- Vince Polito, PhD awarded from Macquarie, 2nd October 2013 for thesis “Sense of agency and hypnosis”. Received 2010 and 2013 Travel Awards from SCEH, 2011 Crasilneck Award for the Best First Paper Presented by a Graduate Student or Young Scientist at an SCEH meeting, and 2011 Macquarie University Higher Degree Research Excellence Award. He also won the Faculty of Human Science’s People’s Choice Award in 3 Minute Thesis Competition, and was University Finalist in the 3 Minute Thesis Competition. Now an Early Career Research Fellow in Psychology, Macquarie, he already has attracted over $213,000 in competitive research funding from a range of Macquarie grant schemes. Most recently he is a National Finalist for the British Council’s Fame Lab Australia competition.
HDR/PhD Supervision (ongoing)
I am Primary Supervisor of 6 current PhD students and Associate Supervisor for 4 current PhD students at Macquarie. - Amanda Selwood (2010-), autobiographical memory and identity
- Misia Temler (2010-), social contagion of autobiographical memories
- Aline Cordonnier (2011-), autobiographical and social remembering and planning; Aline won a Macquarie University Postgraduate Research Fund (PGRF) Vice Chancellor's Recommendation (2012).
- Vana Webster (2013-), collaborative recall in ageing; Vana won a $15,000 Alzheimer’s Australia Dementia Research Foundation Top-Up Scholarship (2014-2015) and a Macquarie University Postgraduate Research Fund (PGRF) Vice Chancellor's Recommendation (2014)
- Katya Numbers (2013-), social contagion, collaboration and ageing
- Emma Nile (2013-), collaborative interventions in ageing
- Kellie Williamson (2013-), distributed cognition and expertise
- Elizabeth Austin (2013-), gesture and memory
- Nikolas Williams (2013-), collaborative recall in hearing loss
- Catherine Browning (2013-), memory and ageing
Postdoctoral Supervision - Postdoctoral: At Macquarie I supervise and mentor 2 current postdoctoral fellows (Adam Congleton, PhD from Stony Brook University, and Hannah Morgan, PhD from University of Oxford).
- Postdoctoral: At UNSW and Macquarie I have supervised and mentored 3 past postdoctoral fellows (Rochelle Cox and Celia Harris, PhDs as above; Stefanie Sharman, PhD from Victoria University of Wellington).
- Postdoctoral: I sponsored 5 applicants for Macquarie Research Fellowships (successful: Rochelle Cox, UNSW; Celia Harris, Macquarie; unsuccessful: Akira O’Connor, Leeds University; Steve Janssen, Hokkaido University; Adam Congleton, Stony Brook University). This success rate is 40%; the Scheme’s overall success rate is 5%.
Mentoring - At UNSW, Macquarie and beyond I offer long term mentoring to at least 14 junior researchers and colleagues (especially women in my discipline):
- Donna Rose Addis (Rutherford Discovery Fellowship, Psychology, University of Auckland)
- Rochelle Cox (ARC DECRA, Cognitive Science, Macquarie)
- Celia Harris (MQRF, Cognitive Science, Macquarie)
- Murieann Irish (ARC DECRA, Psychology and NEURA, UNSW)
- Paul Keil (Cognitive Science and Anthropology, Macquarie)
- Pamela Marsh (CCD Postdoctoral Fellow, Cognitive Science, Macquarie)
- Michelle Meade (Fulbright Senior Scholar, Montana State University and Cognitive Science, Macquarie)
- Michelle Moulds (ARC Australian Research Fellow, Psychology, UNSW)
- Vince Polito (Psychology, Macquarie)
- Anina Rich (Cognitive Science, Macquarie)
- Kirstin Robertson-Gillam (Psychology, Macquarie)
- Stefanie Sharman (Psychology, UNSW and Deakin University)
- Naomi Sweller (Psychology, Macquarie)