Who we are

The Centre for Developmental Science brings together a wide range of researchers at the University of Birmingham who study development and change in brain, cognition, and behaviour.

Professor Ian Apperly

Professor Ian Apperly

Professor of cognition and development
Director of the Centre for Developmental Science

School of Psychology

Ian Apperly is an experimental psychologist. He is interested in how we take other people’s perspectives, how these abilities develop, and why they vary. This has led to an interest in neurodiversity, and other sources of variability in how people understand one another. He is the author of over 100 journal articles, and the 2010 book, entitled “Mindreaders: The cognitive basis of ...

Telephone
0121 414 3339
Email
i.a.apperly@bham.ac.uk

Dr Matthew Apps

Dr Matthew Apps

Senior Research Fellow (≈Associate Professor) / BBSRC David Phillips Fellow

School of Psychology

Dr. Apps is a leading expert in the computational, cognitive and neural basis of motivation and social behaviour. More info about the labs work can be found here: www.MSN-lab.com

Email
m.a.j.apps@bham.ac.uk

Professor Sarah Beck

Professor Sarah Beck

Professor of Cognitive Development

School of Psychology

Sarah Beck - Research in 60 seconds video

Sarah's research examines how we think imaginatively about the real world. She is especially interested in how children become able to speculate about what might have been (counterfactual thinking) and how they think creatively to solve novel problems, particularly those involving tools. She takes a developmental approach, focusing on how children’s imaginative thinking changes and what ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 41 44902
Email
s.r.beck@bham.ac.uk

Professor Andrew J. Bremner

Professor Andrew J. Bremner

Professor of Developmental Psychology
Head of Education

School of Psychology

Professor Andy Bremner is a developmental psychologist with expertise in multisensory perceptual development and the development of touch perception. He has particularly focused on examining how infants come to perceive their own bodies and their relation to the external world around them.

Telephone
+44 (0) 121 41 43833
Email
a.j.bremner@bham.ac.uk

Professor Matthew Broome

Professor Matthew Broome

Professor of Psychiatry and Youth Mental Health
Director of the Institute for Mental Health

School of Psychology

Youth Mental Health - Birmingham HeroesMatthew is an academic psychiatrist and Director of the Institute for Mental Health at the University.  He is a leader in the field of early psychosis and in the philosophy and ethics of mental health.

Telephone
01214147197
Email
m.r.broome@bham.ac.uk

Dr Stephanie Burnett Heyes

Dr Stephanie Burnett Heyes

Assistant Professor

School of Psychology

Dr Stephanie Burnett Heyes is a developmental psychologist with expertise in adolescent and young adult social cognition, emotion, decision-making and mental health/wellbeing. 

Email
s.burnettheyes@bham.ac.uk

Professor Jon Catling

Professor Jon Catling

Professor
Deputy Director of UG Studies
Student Enhancement & Outreach

School of Psychology

Dr Jon Catling is a Professor of Psychology and Education, and is an expert in research design and analysis.  His research interests cover three main areas:  Language acquisition, especially the impact of the ‘Age of Acquisition’ of language; Mental and physical health in young people; and the relationship between cognitive and physical functioning, mental health and immune ...

Email
j.c.catling@bham.ac.uk

Dr Magda Chechlacz

Dr Magda Chechlacz

Assistant Professor in Cognition and Ageing

School of Psychology

Dr Chechlacz is broadly interested in understanding how variability in the neurochemical, structural and functional organisation of the brain affect cognitive functions and relates to individual differences in human behaviour and in susceptibility to cognitive ageing and mental health problems. Her work combines cognitive assessment of attentional functions with spherical deconvolution ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 2852
Email
m.chechlacz.1@bham.ac.uk

Dr Melissa Colloff

Dr Melissa Colloff

Assistant Professor in Forensic Psychology

School of Psychology

Dr Melissa Colloff conducts research on applied memory and cognition. Melissa mainly uses research and statistical modelling techniques from basic psychology to investigate memory and decision-making in the legal system. Melissa is interested in both theoretical and applied aspects.

https://www.melissacolloff.com/

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 4925
Email
m.colloff@bham.ac.uk

Professor Jennifer Cook

Professor Jennifer Cook

Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience

School of Psychology

Professor Cook’s work investigates action and social cognition in typically developed adults and those with autism spectrum conditions.

With respect to action Professor Cook and her colleagues have shown that autistic adults move with subtly different kinematics compared to typical controls (Cook, Blakemore and Press, 2013, Brain). Such atypical kinematics can impact on the ...

Telephone
0121 414 7218
Email
j.l.cook@bham.ac.uk

Professor Stephane De Brito

Professor Stephane De Brito

Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and Neuroscience

School of Psychology

Professor De Brito is a psychologist and director of the Social, Cognitive, Affective, and Neuroscience (SCAN) lab. Research in the SCAN lab focuses on understanding the mechanistic interplay between the social, cognitive, affective, and neurocognitive factors implicated in the development and persistence of antisocial and aggressive behaviour. A second strand of research examines those aspects ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 2641
Email
s.a.debrito@bham.ac.uk

Dr Rory T. Devine

Dr Rory T. Devine

Associate Professor

School of Psychology

Dr Rory T. Devine is a developmental psychologist with expertise in children’s social and cognitive development, longitudinal research methods and psychometrics. His research focuses on individual differences in ‘higher-order’ cognitive skills from infancy to adulthood. His work seeks to understand: (1) why children differ from one another in their ability to reason about ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 3340
Email
r.t.devine@bham.ac.uk

Dr Steven Frisson

Dr Steven Frisson

Assistant Professor

School of Psychology

Dr Steven Frisson’s research focuses on the on-line processing of natural language, mainly using the eyetracking methodology. He has investigated language at many different levels of processing, from how language users exploit low-level information (orthography, phonology) to how pragmatics affects text interpretation. He has carried out research with different populations, including ...

Telephone
0121 414 8202
Email
s.frisson@bham.ac.uk

Dr Fay Julal Cnossen

Dr Fay Julal Cnossen

Associate Professor in Psychology
Director of Undergraduate Studies

School of Psychology

Dr Fay Julal Cnossen is a teaching-focused associate professor. Her teaching focuses on social and personality psychology. Her research focuses on adult attachment and university students’ problem-coping and support-seeking.

 

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 4935
Email
f.s.julal@bham.ac.uk

Professor Andrea Krott

Professor Andrea Krott

Professor of Psychology of Language
Deputy Head of School

School of Psychology

Andrea Krott studies the psychology of human language. Her early research investigated how we store and represent language rules and words in our minds and how children acquire those rules and words. More recently, she has investigated language as an ability that interacts with other cognitive abilities. She is interested in how general cognitive abilities such as attention and cognitive ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 4903
Email
a.krott@bham.ac.uk

Professor Patricia Lockwood

Professor Patricia Lockwood

Professor of Decision Neuroscience

School of Psychology

Professor Patricia Lockwood is a cognitive and social neuroscientist. She is head of the Social Decision Neuroscience Lab. Her work focuses on the neurocognitive foundations of social learning and decision-making across the lifespan and in psychiatric and neurological disorders.

Email
p.l.lockwood@bham.ac.uk

Professor Steven Marwaha

Professor Steven Marwaha

Clinical Professorial Fellow
Institute for Mental Health

School of Psychology

Steven Marwaha is an academic Psychiatrist whose main interest is in early intervention and mood disorders, such as bipolar disorder and depression. His work focusses on pathways to illness and care, and ways of improving the clinical outcomes of this group using both pharmacological and psychological interventions. As a Consultant Psychiatrist he runs the Specialist Mood Disorders Clinic in ...

Telephone
0121 414 3665
Email
s.marwaha@bham.ac.uk

Dr Ali Mazaheri

Dr Ali Mazaheri

Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Programme lead for BSc Psychology

School of Psychology

Dr Mazaheri is an expert on the role of oscillations in cognition and behaviour. His research focuses on the neural interactions underlying different facets of  cognitive control in both the healthy and clinical populations.

Email
a.mazaheri@bham.ac.uk

Dr Carmel Mevorach

Dr Carmel Mevorach

Associate Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience
International Lead

School of Psychology

Dr Carmel Mevorach is a cognitive neuroscientist focusing on mechanisms of top-down attention control, which lie at the heart of various cognitive functions. His research also aims to unravel how individual factors (such as autistic traits or normal aging) mediate mechanisms of attention, including on the neural level.

Website: https://mevorach-lab.weebly.com/

Telephone
+44 (0)121 41 44910
Email
c.mevorach@bham.ac.uk

Dr Maria Michail

Dr Maria Michail

Associate Professor
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow

School of Psychology

Dr Michail is a leading expert in the field of self-harm and suicide prevention. She has been awarded a 3-year Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship to explore how systems modelling and simulation can inform strategic decision making for suicide prevention in young people aged 12-25. Dr Michail is the Co-Chair of the International Association for Suicide Prevention Special Interest Group ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 6795
Email
m.michail@bham.ac.uk

Dr Andrew Olson

Dr Andrew Olson

Associate Professor
Director of PGT Programmes

School of Psychology

Andrew Olson is a neuropsychologist who is interested in cognition and its various forms of breakdown and especially in the organization of language in the brain. He works with patient volunteers with aphasia, children, healthy adults and members of the deaf community.

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 3328
Email
a.l.o.olson@bham.ac.uk

Professor Jane E. Raymond

Professor Jane E. Raymond

Emeritus Professor of Visual Cognition

School of Psychology

Professor Raymond is a visual perception/cognition specialist with a wide range of interests in how humans use and respond to complex visual information. She led the seminal work on the “Attentional Blink”, a finding that launched intensive interest in labs around the world on how selective attention operates over time. Her work has included studies on visual attention across time and ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 4912
Email
j.raymond@bham.ac.uk

Professor Caroline Richards

Professor Caroline Richards

Professor of Neurodevelopmental Conditions
Deputy Head of Education

School of Psychology

The aim of Professor Richards’ research is to reduce negative clinical outcomes for individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders. Her work with children with autism and children with rare genetic syndromes has thus far focused on reducing self-injury, improving sleep disorders and understanding the impact of premature birth. Her research uses experimental, epidemiological, single case and ...

Telephone
0121 4158098
Email
c.r.richards@bham.ac.uk

Dr Katrien Segaert

Dr Katrien Segaert

Associate Professor

School of Psychology

Dr. Katrien Segaert's research focuses on the neurobiology of language processing, with a special focus on how sentence-level processes and interactive communication are supported by the brain. She also studies how the neurobiological infrastructure of language processing changes throughout the lifespan and researches lifestyle factors (such as regular physical exercise) that can ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 7760
Email
k.segaert@bham.ac.uk

Professor Kim Shapiro

Professor Kim Shapiro

Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience

School of Psychology

Professor Shapiro in collaboration with other colleagues published the first paper on the ‘attentional blink’ phenomenon. His current research interests continue in attention, particularly as it interacts with short- and long- term memory. He maintains an active lab that includes postdocs, doctoral and masters students, and undergraduate research assistants. In addition to basic ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 4930
Email
k.l.shapiro@bham.ac.uk

Dr Sophie Sowden-Carvalho

Dr Sophie Sowden-Carvalho

Assistant Professor in Psychology

School of Psychology

Dr Sophie Sowden-Carvalho is an experimental psychologist and director of the U21 Autism Research Network. She is interested in social cognition across the lifespan as well as in a range of clinical conditions including autism, conduct disorder and Parkinson’s Disease, and takes a cross-cultural approach to her research.

To read more about Dr Sowden-Carvalho’s research, visit her lab ...

Telephone
0121 678 1000
Email
s.l.sowden@bham.ac.uk

Dr Andrew Surtees

Dr Andrew Surtees

Associate Professor in Psychology

School of Psychology

Dr Andrew Surtees is an expert in social cognition, autism and mental health.  He combines cutting-edge research on social understanding in typical and atypical populations with practice as a Clinical Psychologist.

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 4934
Email
a.surtees@bham.ac.uk

Dr Robin Thompson

Dr Robin Thompson

Associate Professor

School of Psychology

Robin Thompson is a cognitive psychologist interested in the underlying nature of human language (both signed and spoken) and, in particular, how language is related to other aspects of cognition.

Research group website

 

Email
r.thompson@bham.ac.uk

Professor Rachel Upthegrove

Professor Rachel Upthegrove

Professor of Psychiatry and Youth Mental Health
Consultant Psychiatrist Early Intervention in Psychosis

School of Psychology

Rachel is Professor of Psychiatry and Youth Mental Health at the University of Birmingham, and Consultant Psychiatrist in the Birmingham Early Intervention Services. Her research Interest is within the field of major mental illness; particularly schizophrenia and co-morbid depression in early phases of illness. Recent projects have developed the investigation of inflammatory models of psychosis ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 6241
Email
r.upthegrove@bham.ac.uk

Dr Kate Woodcock

Dr Kate Woodcock

Reader in Applied Clinical Psychology
Lead of People and Culture for the School of Psychology

School of Psychology

Dr Kate Woodcock’s research interests can be summarised as aiming to investigate and explain human behaviour by considering multiple potential influences at different levels of explanation. For example, people’s genes, their brain structure, their brain functioning, cognitive, physiological and emotional functioning can all affect people’s behaviour both individually and in an ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 6036
Email
k.a.woodcock@bham.ac.uk