Overview

Overview

The Department is committed to a policy of ensuring that all members of staff achieve their full potential in a supportive and responsive work environment. It has enthusiastically adopted the Athena Swan charter of good employment practice for women working in science, engineering and technology in higher education and research, and was delighted to receive the Silver Athena Swan Award in 2007 in recognition of the support we offer to women in the Department.

We are very fortunate in having so many excellent female staff in the Department, both in academic and non-academic roles. To support their career development and also to meet the needs of all staff, we support flexible and part-time working patterns where possible, provide mentoring, and fund the activities of an Early Career Forum run by postdocs for junior researchers in the Department.

Department of Psychology Silver Award

The Department of Psychology Silver Award submission documents are available from the University Research Athena Swan pages 

The Department of Psychology's Silver Award is one of five Athena SWAN awards currently held by the University of York.

Full details are available on the Athena SWAN web-site.

Recent successes

Recent successes for women in the Department 

FACULTY

Dr Jane Clarbour (Senior Lecturer)

•    Provost of Goodricke College
•    Settled Goodricke as first college on Campus East (2009)
•    Serves on Senate and on the Special Cases Committee. She
•    Advisor to the Prison Service Research Ethics Board, York and Humberside area
•    Consultant to the forensic centre at the Women's Frontier University Pakistan. 

Dr. Jo Clarke (Director MSc in Applied Forensic Psychology)

•    Invited participant, Royal Society discussion meeting on Law and the Brain. 
•    Award's Committee of the Butler Trust in recognition of ordinary work done extraordinarily well.

Dr. Silke Gobel (lecturer)

•    Awarded Anniversary lectureship in Psychology (2008)
•    Director of the MSc in Reading Language and Cognition (2009-11)
•    Developed the new MSc Developmental and Disorders, which will be launched in October 2011. 
•    Has hosted visiting students from labs in Belgium and in Germany. 

Dr. Silvia Gennari (lecturer)


•    Awarded Anniversary lectureship in Psychology (2009) to undertake a period of research leave; submitted two grant applications during this stint.
•    Published in four top journals, Cognition, Cognitive Psychology, NeuroImage and the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
•    Director MSc Cognitive Neuroscience (2010)
•    Her paper with Coll & Florit received the ‘John Local’ Silver Award from the HOD (July 2011).

Dr Beth Jeffries (Reader)


•    Director of Graduate Studies.
•    Awarded the Elizabeth Warrington Prize 2008 by the British Neuropsychological Society.
•    Appointed to a Readership in the Department of Psychology from October 2011.
•    Obtained research grant from the European Research Council (ERC)

Dr Emma Hayiou-Thomas

•    Anniversary Lectureship 2011-12

Dr Liat Levita

•    Awarded the Vice Chancellor's Teaching Award for Excellence (2011)
•    Awarded  the University of York Union Supervisor of the Year Award (2011). 
•    Appointed to a lectureship (2011)

Professor Cynthia McDougall (Retired Director, MSc in Applied Forensic Psychology)

•    Retained part-time employment with the Department, mainly supervising research projects and as a member of PhD research committees.
•    Consultant to Durham Tees Valley Probation Trust
•    Appointed by the Ministry of Justice as an Independent Investigator under Article 2 (the right to life) of the European Convention of Human Rights (2008).
•    Appointed Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology in recognition of research implementing randomised controlled trials (2009).

Dr. Shirley-Ann Rueschemeyer (lecturer)

•    Awarded a Veni grant from the Dutch Research Council to investigate the role of perceptual and action experience in the representation of language in humans (2009).
•    Awarded a Brain & Cognition grant which will fund research at the Donders Centre for Cognition on how links between action/perception and language can be recruited to improve vocabulary learning in primary school children (with Harold Bekkering and Rolf Zwaan, 2011).

Dr Katie Slocombe (lecturer)

•    Recipient of the BPS Award for Outstanding Doctoral Research (2006)
•    Awarded the Comenius Early Career Psychologist award (Union of Psychologists' Associations of the Czech Republic)
•    Invited to give the British Science Association Charles Darwin Award lecture, at the British Science Festival (September 2009)
•    Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Award (2010)

Professor Maggie Snowling (Professor)

•    Elected Fellow of the British Academy (2009)
•    Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, Society for the Scientific study of Reading (2010)

•    Recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (2012).

Annie Trapp

•    Awarded the BPS's 2012 Psychology Education Board Lifetime Achievement Award. The award recognises Annie's 'distinguished lifetime achievement within psychology education'. The award is tremendously well deserved and reflects Annie's sustained creative influence on teaching within our discipline.

Dr Meesha Warmington (Teaching Fellow)

•    Secured funding from the Higher Education Academy Psychology Network and the University of York to develop a system of student feedback. 
•    Coordinates support for international students in the department
•    Has developed  the Welcome Transition Page for incoming students . 

POST-DOCS

Dr Heidi Baseler

•    Committee member ECR forum
•    Co-authored paper in Nature Neuroscience with Tony Morland
•    Awarded a ‘John Local’ Gold Award by the Head of Department (July 2011). 
•    Together with Lisa Henderson set up the first YNiC EEG study.

Dr Fiona Duff (postdoc)

•    Recipient of British Psychological Society's POST award for three months secondment to the Department of Science and Technology
•    Has implemented large-scale Randomised Control Trials which seek to boost the reading and language skills of young children with literacy difficulties.
•    Disseminates scientific research to educationalists, by giving talks to various audiences, publishing articles and, more recently, co-authoring a book.

Dr. Debbie Gooch (post-doc)

•    Lab Manager, Centre for Reading and Language and Temporary Lecturer (2010-2011) Coordinated and implemented the ‘Development &f Language stream’ in the new degree programme
•    Organised an invited symposium on comorbidity at the International Conference for British Dyslexia Association in Harrogate in June 2011. 
•    Secured funding for a study visit to the University of Denver in Colorado (Professor Bruce Pennington; 2011)

Dr Lisa Henderson  (post-doc)

•    Study visit to Professor Chuck Perfetti's lab in Pittsburgh (2009)
•    Set up ethical procedures and health and safety guidelines for EEG (with Heidi Baseler)
•    Author of the first York EEG study (published in Brain and Language, 2010).


Dr Yvonna Lavis (Teaching Fellow)

•    Implementation mini projects and oral presentations in the first year of the new BSc degree.  Published paper on perceptual learning in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2009.  Successfully completed a project funded by the Australian Development of Health and Aging  on the management of hepatitis C.

Dr Kristina Moll  (Post-doc)

•    Gained her PhD in 2009. 
•    Successfully completed a two-year Marie Curie Fellowship
•    Appointed Research Fellow for the Nuffield Language for Reading project (2011)

Dr. Hannah Nash (post doc)

•    Manager of Wellcome Reading and Language Project
•    Recipient of Wellcome Trust Vacation Bursary awards (2010, 2011)
•    Established procedures and facilities for EEG studies with children in the Wolfson Labs (with Debbie Gooch)

Carin Whitney (post doc)

•    Awarded the People award (funded by  Wellcome Trust)  for a 8-months project investigating the neural basis of semantic cognition with TMS and fMRI (Dec 2010 – July 2011); this project has been extended for 1 ½ months to pilot follow-up materials (sponsored by the Psychology Department Research Funds and Innovation and Research Priming Fund; applicants Beth Jefferies and Carin Whitney)
•    Awarded  Royal Society International travel grant for participating at a 2-week neuroimaging workshop at UCLA, USA ( 2010)
•    Published a series of papers that explore how semantic cognition is represented in the healthy brain using both fMRI and TMS; together these data confirm the importance of a distributed brain network, which is consistent with the results from patient with semantic impairments after lesions to the brain

PhD Students

Annelies Vredeveldt

Has won 1st prize in a competition conducted by the American Psychology-Law Society for her dissertation  titled “The benefits of eye-closure on eyewitness memory” (2012)

Lorna Hamilton

has been appointed Lecturer in Psychology, York St John University (2012)

Recent grants

Dr Beth Jefferies (with Andy Ellis)

•    ERC Starter Grant: Bedding wells or wedding bells? Lexical and semantic influences on phoneme binding. £612k
•    Led a team including Andy Ellis and Piers Cornelissen which was awarded £400k to study the biological basis of semantic cognition (2012)

Dr Jelena Mikovic (with Gareth Gaskell)

•    ESRC: Systematicity and consistency in the consolidation of word knowledge (£380K)

Recent academic appointments

•    Dr. Shirley-Ann Rueschemeyer to a lectureship

Career progression

Heidi Baseler

•    Has been appointed to a lectureship in HYMS (2012)

Dr. Sophie Brigstocke

•    Former PhD student was appointed Wolfson clinic coordinator (2009)

Dr Leesa Clarke (former PhD student)

•    Three-month temporary lectureship to cover a maternity leave (January 2009)

Dr Claudine Crane (research fellow)

•    Appointed to a lectureship in Psychology, Sheffield Hallam University (December 2008)

Fiona Duff

• Has been appointed Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford (2012).

Dr Silke Fricke (research fellow)

•    Appointed to a lectureship in Speech and Language Pathology, University of Sheffield (January 2011)

Professor Susan Gathercole

•    Appointed Director MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge (January 2011)

Debbie Gooch

•    Has been appointed Project Manager of the SCALES Project, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London.

Lisa Henderson

•    Has been appointed Lecturer in Psychology, University of York (2012)

Dr Joni Holmes (research fellow)

•    Appointed to a lectureship in Psychology, Northumbria University (January 2009)
•    Appointed Scientific Officer,  MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge (2011)

Dr Jelena Mirkovic (former lecturer)

•    Having secured research funding on grammar learning is returning to a research appointment in the Department

Hannah Nash 

•    Has been awarded an Early Career Fellowship in the Department of Psychology, University College London (2012).

Dr Poppy Nash (research fellow)

•    Appointed to a lectureship in Education, University of York  (April 2011)

Dr Sonali Nag

•    Successfully completed a Newton International Fellowship (2009-11)
•    Co-edited a special Issue of Reading & Writing on Alphasyllabaries
•    Convener of International Symposium  on Language, Literacy and Cognitive Development (Bangalore, 2011) (co-sponsored by University of York)

Maggie Snowling

•    Has been elected President of St John’s College, Oxford (2012)

Welcome back

Dr Emma Hayiou-Thomas (lecturer)

•    Following maternity leave with Matthew

Support staff

Support staff

The Department has 15 support staff of which 10 are women. Support staff play a vital role in the department's operations. Recent appointments include:

• Kelly Freebury
  Assessment & Feedback Administrator
• Mandy Kenyon
  Research Support Officer
• Rachel Grimes
  Year 1 & 2 Undergraduate & Admissions Administrator

Events

Events

The Department allocates an annual budget to sponsor events enabling women to discuss issues surrounding their careers.

• Women's Faculty Dinner (2007)
  This was held in Heslington Hall. Discussions were wide ranging and featured biographies of women faculty, issues surrounding maternity leave and promotions.
• Women's Faculty Dinner (2008)
  This was held at Meltons Too. Following biographies of new members, discussions moved on to recording recent successes and on issues for change.
• Dr Tanya Byron
  In January 2009, the University conferred an honorary degree on Dr Tanya Byron (alumna), consultant clinical psychologist, for the contribution she has made to the public understanding of psychology through programmes such as Little Angels and The House of Tiny Tearaways. In 2007 she headed an independent review of into the potentially harmful effects of both the Internet and video games on children; this was published in 2008 as 'Safer Children in a Digital World'.
• Professor Uta Frith
  In 2009, Professor Uta Frith (one of the winners of the 2007 Outstanding Women in Science Award) and Professor Chris Frith were distinguished visitors in the Department where they conducted master classes in developmental and cognitive neuroscience