At any moment, the world offers far more information than we can fully process. Although it often feels as though we are aware of everything and remember events exactly as they occurred, our attention, memory, and conscious experience instead reflect only a limited sample of our environment. If our reality relies only on segments of the world around us, what gets in?

At the core of my research programme, I investigate how information is prioritised for conscious experience. Much of this research examines how emotionally powerful information - information that tends to be prioritised - is attended and remembered in the context of competing stimuli. Age and other individual differences are also central to these questions, addressing how people differ (or do not differ) in the way they attend to and remember information.

I completed my PhD in Cognitive Psychology at UNSW Sydney with Steve Most, where I studied emotion-attention interactions, including emotion-induced blindness. I then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California with Mara Mather, examining how age influences emotion and attention. During this time, I was awarded an NIH/NIA F32 Postdoctoral National Research Service Award (NRSA) and began investigating the positivity effect - an intriguing tendency for older adults to prioritise positive information and down-weight negative information relative to younger adults.

At UWA, I am a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychological Science and director of the PECAN (Perception, Emotion, Cognition, Ageing, and Neuroscience) Lab. In my lab, we study a range of topics including emotion-cognition interactions, the positivity effect and age-related changes in cognition, individual differences in attentional prioritisation (such as those related to social media use, eating behaviors, and body image disturbances), how arousal impacts cognition more generally, and neural mechanisms that support these processes.

Alongside my research, I teach across multiple courses in psychological science, with my contributions to student learning recognised through multiple School and University awards.

2020-Present: Director, Perception, Emotion, Cognition, Ageing, & Neuroscience Lab
2026-Present: Director, School of Psychological Science Engagement and Impact Committee
2026-Present: Member, School of Psychological Science Executive Committee
2023; 2025-Present: Unit Equivalence Advisor, School of Psychological Science 
2023-2025: Member, School of Psychological Science Undergraduate Education Committee (Deputy Chair, 2025)
2023: Member, UWA School of Psychological Science Inclusion & Diversity Committee
2020-2022: Member, School of Psychological Science Research Committee (Deputy Chair, 2022; Adjunct Officer, 2021; Participant & Equipment Officer, 2020-2021)

Cognitive Neuroscience (PSYC2217)
- Unit Coordinator & Lecturer, 2025-Present

Psychology: Mind and Brain (PSYC1101)
- Lecturer, 2020-Present
- Unit Coordinator, 2020-2024

Human Neuroanatomy and Neuropsychology (PSYC5539)
- Unit Coordinator, 2020-2021