2023 - Present: Board Member, UWA International Space Centre
2022 - Present: Director, Centre for the Advancement of Research on Emotion
2020 – 2022: Director, School of Psychological Science Research Committee
2018 – 2022: Co-Director, Centre for the Advancement of Research on Emotion
2020 – 2022: Member, School of Psychological Science Executive Committee
2019 – 2020: Deputy Chair, Indigenous Working Party
2018 – 2019: UWA Faculty of Science Future Leaders Program
2018 – 2019: Member, School of Psychological Science Undergraduate Education Committee
2017: Founding member, Association for Cognitive Bias Modification
2016 – 2017: Member, School of Psychological Science Community Engagement Committee

Our cognitive system is a filter through which we experience the world. The way in which we process the vast amount of information coming from the world around us has an enormous impact on how we feel and act in the present, on how we look towards the future.

This balance between cognition, emotion, and behaviour, particularly in individuals exposed to adversity, represents the focus of Dr Lies Notebaert’s work. When the balance between these processes is right, individuals can show remarkable resilience. However, when this balance falls apart, it can have a devastating impact on emotional wellbeing.

Dr Notebaert examines cognitive processes such as attention, interpretation, memory, and complex planning, to find out how these affect mental health and resilience in people who are dealing with adversity. This adversity can come from a variety of sources, such as the threat of natural disasters (for instance bushfires), declining physical health in older adults, workplace stress, or traumatic experiences. She develops computer-based tasks to measure these cognitive processes, and builds computer-, tablet-, or smartphone-based training tasks to alter maladaptive cognitive processes, with the aim of improving mental health and resilience.

Dr Notebaert obtained her cognitive-experimental research background through a Bachelor and Master of Science in Theoretical and Experimental Psychology at Ghent University, Belgium. She holds a PhD from the department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology at Ghent University. In 2011, she joined UWA’s Centre for the Advancement of Research on Emotion, where she is now Director.