Current members

Professor Danaë Stanton Fraser

Lab Director

Prof. Danaë Stanton Fraser directs the CREATE Lab in Psychology at the University of Bath. Her area of expertise is human-computer interaction with a focus on the design and evaluation of mobile, virtual and pervasive technologies. Danaë’s work is underpinned by a process of co-design with end users and industrial partners in the development and evaluation of technologies.

Dr Alexandra Voinescu (née Neguţ)

Lecturer

Alexandra’s expertise is in cognitive psychology and human factors. Her key research topics are human–computer interaction and the use of virtual reality in clinical and nonclinical practice, particularly, in clinical neuropsychological assessment and rehabilitation.

Dr Susanna Martin

Research Officer

Susanna is the Experimental Officer for the Department of Psychology. Susanna's thesis examined learning and motivation with hand held devices. She has also completed post doctoral research exploring local knowledge, decision making, energy understanding, and completed work for the Vice Chancellor evaluating doctoral provision. A keen advocate of social media tools you can follow Susanna on Twitter @SusannaMarie.

Dr Michael Proulx

Reader in Psychology / Director of the Crossmodal Cognition Lab

Michael holds a PhD in Psychological and Brain Sciences from the Johns Hopkins University and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. He is also Visiting Senior Lecturer in Multimedia in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London.

Dr Bhagyashree Patil

Lecturer, Department of Computer Science

Bhagy completed a degree engineering in Information Technology (IT) and holds a Masters in Management of IT from the University of Nottingham. She completed her PhD in Human Computer Interaction and Experience Design in the Internet of Things (IoT) at the CREATE lab. She was also part of the Research & Enterprise in Arts & Creative Technology (REACT) hub in Watershed, Bristol. Bhagy is currently a lecturer in the department of Computer Science.

Dr Ana Levordashka

Research Associate

Ana has a background in media psychology and computational language analysis. Her present research focuses on understanding subjective experiences of art and technology using mixed-methods approach, including in-depth behavioural and neurophysiological analysis and creative interviewing techniques. As part of the AHRC’s Creative Clusters and in close collaboration with the Bristol Vision Institute, Ana will be working with audiences and industry partners on a series of laboratory- and field-based studies. She is committed to rigour and inclusivity and has a keen interest in the societal implications of psychological research.

Dr Eleanna Skoulikari

Research Associate

Eleanna has an academic background in education, psychology and technology. Her PhD research investigates the perspectives of children and teachers regarding the use of digital devices in assessment and how their experiences of using technologies at home influence the way they use online maths websites for the assessment of the pupils. The project has established collaborations with 3P Learning, provider of Mathletics, and the Department for Education (DfE). Eleanna is currently a cross cutting fellow on the AHRC cluster.

Dr Alicia Cork

Research Associate

Alicia has a background in using computational methodologies to test and extend social psychological theory. Her PhD used natural language processing and social network analysis to detect and understand social identities in online textual data. Currently, she is working with the National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online (REPHRAIN) to understand how we can better conceptualise the notion of online harm, and in turn improve harm mitigation strategies. She is also involved in a project which aims to understand the risks associated with the adoption of realistic avatars in virtual reality.

Dr Marvin Ramokapane

Research Associate

Marvin is a research associate at the University of Bristol. He is part of the Bristol Cyber Security Group (BCSG) and a lead researcher at REPHRAIN responsible for the Design and Engagement strand. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Lancaster University. Marvin's research interest lies in computer security and privacy, with an emphasis on human factors. His work aims to understand the challenges users face when enforcing security and privacy mechanisms of modern technologies.

Johanna Meyer

Doctoral Student

Johanna is interested in how people interact with maps. Her PhD is combining ideas from psychology and cartography to look at how maps can frame public health problems and how this relates to a map user's understanding of the world. Her background is in cognitive psychology and linguistics.

Themis Papaioannou

Doctoral Student

Themis's research interests concern cognitive involvement and brain activity in interactive virtual environments (VE) and the application of VE for clinical use. Her PhD will investigate the role of immersion and presence in VE used for cognitive rehabilitation of patients with dementia and Mild Cognitive Impairment. Her background is in psychology, human-computer interaction and interaction design.

Anca Salagean

Doctoral Student

Anca’s main research interests are embodiment, body perception and immersive technologies. Her PhD, which is part of the AHRC’s Creative Clusters programme, will focus on embodiment in immersive environments. In collaboration with the CAMERA lab in the Computer Science department, she will investigate the factors that underpin and modulate the sense of embodiment in relation to virtual avatars and the behavioural, attitudinal and cognitive effects of this phenomenon.

Sarah Warbis

Doctoral Student

Sarah has a background in social psychology, and her PhD is combining research into bystander intervention with virtual reality. More specifically, Sarah is investigating factors linked to the likelihood of a bystander intervening when witnessing sexual assault. Among other methods, she will be using live-action virtual reality to explore this in a realistic yet controlled environment.

Sam Beech

Doctoral Student

Sam is interested in investigating how the visual system explores and processes different environments in virtual reality. Throughout his PhD he will be investigating the extent to which the content of a virtual environment can be used to predict the user’s gaze. The findings of this work will be used to develop different types of rendering patterns to reduce bandwidth use and processing demand. This project is in collaboration with the University of Bristol and BT. His background is in language processing, language acquisition and vision science.

Michael Colman

Doctoral Student

Michael's research focuses on the feasibility and acceptability of virtual reality as a tool for the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder. His background is in psychology, and he has previously investigated the practical applications of virtual reality in health/fitness and education. His overall goal is to take a user-centred approach in designing a VR application, and evaluating its potential to help in the treatment of OCD, particularly focusing on exposure-response prevention therapy.

Nathan Taylor

Acting up Experimental Officer

Nathan has currently taken on the role as acting experimental officer while Susie Martin is on maternity leave. This role involves the efficient and safe running of the Psychology Research Hub laboratories. He also assists in the development, programming and use of specialised equipment, software or processes in research and teaching. In addition he undertakes, or co-ordinates the maintaining, upgrading, optimising and integrating of laboratory equipment. Nathan completed his Master's in Neuroimaging at Cardiff University in 2018.

Seline Uran

Techinican

Seline is the department's newly appointed technician whose role is to assist Nathan, the Experimental Officer, in managing the health and safety of laboratory spaces as well as the allocation and maintenance of workshop resources. Another core role involves providing aid to researchers that use the experimental software available in the department. Seline has a special interest in neuroimaging technologies, in particular EEG. Most recently, she has created a departmental news bulletin and is responsible for the construction and distribution of this each month. Seline obtained her masters degree in Cognitive Neuroscience & Human Neuroimaging from the University of Sheffield in 2021.

Honorary members

Dr Helen Brown

Doctoral Student

Helen completed her PhD with the CREATE lab in 2020. Her research explored the relationship between emotional arousal, interoception, and moral decision-making using online, psychophysiological, and Virtual Reality methodologies. She was also part of the EPSRC Virtual Reality Documentary encounters research team. Helen now works as a Content Strategist for Virgin Pulse, writing and developing health and wellness content strategy for a range of topics and media types.

Dr Harry Farmer

Lecturer

Harry’s research interests focus on the role of the self and the body in social cognition. He is particularly interested in how our perceptions of our own body and the bodies of others serve to structure social cognition and social interaction. Harry employs a variety of methods including psychophysics, behavioural economics and neuroimaging. Harry currently works on the Virtual Realities project examining the cognitive and affective effects of non-fiction virtual reality. Harry is now a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Greenwich. Research Output.

Dr Chris Bevan

Research Associate and Honorary Research Fellow

Chris is a Research Associate in Computer Science at the University of Bristol, He received his PhD on human-computer trust in urban pervasive computing from the University of Bath in 2011. He then worked in the CREATE lab on projects based around pervasive computing, social robotics, online security and cyber-identity. Specialising in Human Computer Interaction and human-centred design. He is currently working on the EPSRC Virtual Realities project.

Ms Maxine Glancy

Lead UX Research Scientist, BBC Research & Development, Honorary Research Fellow

Maxine initiates and manages a range of strategic, applied and fundamental research projects at the BBC. Within these multidisciplinary project teams her primary focus is leading the design-research and behavioural-science aspects of the work streams. Over the past 8 years she has built-up a research science team which provides a HCI/User-experience research function supporting work throughout the wider BBC. Maxine has collaborated with the CREATE Lab for many years and is a partner on the EPSRC Virtual Realities project.

Dr David Martin

Associate researcher and Honorary Research Fellow

David is a part-time researcher, but a full-time geek. During his PhD David worked alongside teachers to utilise new technologies as educational tools. His thesis examined learning from graphical timelines, and he is interested in differences in cognition between graphical and textual representations of information, and in the non intrusive measurement of the cognitive loads associated with each. David can be found on Twitter @researchcollab.

David Crellin

CEO ScienceScope Ltd and Honorary Research Fellow

As an experienced company director David brings his business expertise to bear on how best to engage schools and high technology businesses in transforming education so that it can deliver on the employment needs of the UK for the 21st century. Recently David led a successful proof of concept Internet of Things at School project for the Infocomm Development Authority in Singapore. As CEO of ScienceScope David was a key partner of the BBC in delivering the micro:bit project. David has collaborated with the CREATE lab over the last 14 years.

Recent past members

Dr Monique Huysamen

Research Associate

Monique’s research interests are around identity and the intersections of power, gender, sexuality, race, and class. She is particularly interested in critical, reflexive, and participatory approaches to qualitative research methodology. She currently works as a research associate on the ReNEW project, an interdisciplinary project working towards developing a multi-hazard Early Warning System (EWS) for public health. Monique is now a Research Associate in Sexual and Reproductive Health at Manchester Metropolitan University. Research Output.

Dr Lia Emanuel

Research Associate

Lia has an academic background in psychology with a focus in social cognition and automatic behaviour, and received her PhD from the University of Reading in 2012. Lia worked at the CREATE Lab investigating cyber-identity, particularly, examining self-disclosure within different online spaces as well as individuals' attitudes and perceived acceptability of online identification tools. Lia is now a Senior UX Consultant at Nomensa.

Dr Maria Nikolaidou

Maria completed her PhD on problematic internet use at the University of Bath in 2015. She then became the Psychology department's technician, before moving on to become a full time lecturer at bath college.

Dr Charlotte Hoare

Doctor of Engineering (EngD) in Digital Media

Charlotte’s research concerned interaction with enhanced television experiences. Charlotte’s research focused on the implications of multi-screen experiences in the living room, with a view to providing insight into cognitive load issues. Charlotte is now Team Lead of Software Engineering at the BBC.