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Overview
Affiliations
AffiliationTelephone
Professor in the Department of Psychology+44 (0) 191 33 43235
Associate Fellow in the Institute of Advanced Study
Co-Director and Lead of The Festival, Discovery Research Platform in the Institute for Medical Humanities

Biography

Career

I am a Professor in Psychology and the Co-Director of the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities, a £9.6m investment by Wellcome in interdisciplinary research on mental health and health inequalities. As part of the Platform I lead its Festival site and the ReaderBank project, a collaboration with Edinburgh International Book Festival. 

From 2012 to 2022 I was a member of Hearing the Voice, an interdisciplinary project that explored the topic of voice-hearing (or auditory verbal hallucinations). Joining originally as a postdoctoral researcher, I was one of six co-applicants for Hearing the Voice's second Wellcome award in 2015, and in 2020 I became Associate Director of the project (working alongside PI Charles Fernyhough and Co-Director Angela Woods). The project is internationally recognised for its interdisciplinary approach and contribution to psychosis research, which produced over 200 outputs. In 2019 we launched Understanding Voices, the world's largest web resource for supporting people with distressing voices. 

In 2024 I became Scientific Chair of the International Consortium on Hallucinations Research, a global network of over 300 senior hallucinations researchers worldwide, and in 2018 I was the co-founder of the Early Career Hallucinations Research (ECHR) group, a counterpart for junior researchers. In 2023 my book Presence: The Strange Science of the Unseen Other won the British Psychological Society Book Award for Popular Science. 

Prior to working at Durham I completed my PhD in Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, and worked as a Research Co-ordinator for Lime Trees Child & Adolescent Mental Health team in the NHS in York. This included working on several projects relating to health and cognition in autism. 

Research

My research is broadly focused on mental health and neurodiversity. This includes work on psychosis and autism primarily, but has also involved research on inner speech, mental imagery, executive functioning, categorisation, and perception. My most recent research has concerned "felt presence": the sensation that someone is present without any sensory cues. Such experiences occur in psychosis, Parkinson's, epilepsy, bereavement, survival situations, and around the boundaries of sleep. 

Reviewing & Editing

Ad-Hoc Reviewing: Autism Research, Biological Psychiatry, British Journal of Psychiatry, Cognitive Development, Cognitive Science, Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, Consciousness & Cognition, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Human Brain Mapping, Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders, Journal of Behavior Therapy & Experimental Psychiatry, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Journal of Psychiatric Research, Lancet Psychiatry, Neuroimage: Clinical, Neuroscience of Consciousness, Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, Psychological Medicine, Psychology & Psychotherapy, Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, Research in Developmental Disabilites, Review of Philosophy & Psychology, Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, Schizophrenia Bulletin, Translational Psychiatry

Editing: Guest Editor, Review of Philosophy & Psychology, Schizophrenia Bulletin.

Research interests

  • Felt presence
  • Inner speech and mental imagery
  • Language and executive function
  • Psychosis and voice-hearing
  • Autism and neurodiversity

Esteem Indicators

  • 2024 - 2028: Scientific Chair of the International Consortium on Hallucinations Research: Elected in 2024 by the ICHR
  • 2023: British Psychological Society Book Award - Popular Science: Awarded for "Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other"
  • 2020: Wellcome/AHRC Medical Humanities Award - Best Research: Awarded for "Hearing the Voice" (co-award with Hearing the Voice team members)
  • 2018: Research Staff of the Year - Durham University: Co-awarded with Dr Marco Bernini (English Studies)
  • 2016: International Consortium on Hallucinations Research, North American Satellite Meeting, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL.: Invited speaker. Talk: “Searching for Speech and Language in Voice-Hearers Without Diagnoses”. 27th September 2016
  • 2016: Royal College of Psychiatrists, Spirituality and Psychiatry Special Interest Group Conference “Hallucinations and Spiritual Experience: Voices, Visions and Revelation”: Invited speaker. Talk: “Voices and the Etheric: A Research Study of Spiritualist Experience”. 25th November 2016
  • 2016: Wellcome Trust Small Arts Award Committee: Scientific Advisor
  • 2015: International Consortium on Hallucinations Research, Hearing Voices and Hallucinations: Research, Practice and Recovery, St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne VA.: Invited speaker. Talk: “Inner Speech”. 21st October 2015.

Publications

Journal Article

Supervision students