Research highlights

Clarifying the neurocognitive mechanisms of emotion reasoning and development in school-aged children

Dr Hilary Richardson, BBSRC c. £1.3m, 2025-2030

This research will provide critical insights into children’s emotion reasoning and development, establish an approach for future research studying other aspects of cognitive development in children, and forge new links between emotion research and real-world social behaviour and outcomes. More broadly, this research will significantly accelerate our understanding of a fundamental component of human social cognition that supports health and well-being throughout the lifespan.

Simulating the impact of first responder communication strategies on citizen compliance in emergencies

Dr Anne Templeton, UKRI FLF c. £676k, 2026-2028

This project seeks to address the challenge of understanding how and why members of the public react to first responders communication strategies in emergencies. We bring together expertise from social psychological research on group processes, first responder experience and guidance creation, and computational modelling to test and simulate collective behaviour. 

Opponent visuospatial coding as a fundamental organising principle of brain integration

Dr Edward Silson, BBSRC c. £601k, 2026-2029

Recent fMRI work by our group (& collaborators/others) highlights that more anterior memory-related regions contain a high proportion of negative population receptive fields (-ve pRFs), whereas more posterior regions of visual cortex contain mostly positive pRFs (+ve). Recent work suggests that +ve/-ve pRFs that represent similar visual field positions respond more differently during memory recall than +ve/-ve pRFs that represent less similar visual field positions. We are currently exploring whether this opponent visuospatial framework could be a fundamental organising principle of the brain.

Mental health in the moment: A developmental study of adolescent mental health and its influences in daily life

Professor Aja Murray, Wellcome Trust c. £1.2m, 2023-2030

Adolescence is both a critical period of development for mental health and a time of rapid change. To illuminate the evolving influences on, and manifestation of, mental health issues over this period thus necessitates creative methodologies that capture rich data on multiple timescales. The current study will use a multi-timeframe measurement burst accelerated cohort study to capture rich data on the daily life experiences of adolescents in relation to their mental health over 5 years. This will allow us, for the first time, to understand how daily life experiences coalesce into long-term changes in mental health, as well as how long-term developmental changes impact the daily life manifestations of, and proximal influences on, mental health issues. This can inform better preventive interventions by identifying new and optimal daily life targets at different developmental stages. It can also provide invaluable information for the further development of promising and increasingly popular ecological momentary (smartphone-based) interventions at these developmental stages.

Lithium's mechanism in bipolar disorder: investigating the light hypersensitivity hypothesis

Professor Jasna Martinovic, Wellcome Trust c. £350k, 2023-2028

Lithium has been in use for 70 years and is the most effective treatment for bipolar disorder. It has many actions but the precise mechanism of action in bipolar disorder is uncertain. Recent evidence suggests that lithium may work by stabilizing aberrant circadian rhythms of mood, cognition and rest/activity, possibly via an action at the level of the retina. Specifically, individuals with bipolar disorder who are hypersensitive to the destabilizing effects of excess light in the evening may respond to lithium because it acts on the retina to make light-induced circadian disruption less likely. This is a plausible and exciting hypothesis that, if true, could herald a new era of chronotherapeutic approaches. We will test whether people with bipolar disorder are hypersensitive to evening light stimuli and whether lithium works by increasing retinal resilience to light-induced circadian disruption. In parallel, we will test the effect of light stimuli and lithium treatment on retinal organoid cells derived from individuals with bipolar disorder. People with bipolar disorder are involved in every aspect of this project, from design to dissemination, and we will also co-produce a range of knowledge exchange activities on the theme of 'Bipolar Disorder, Lithium and Light'.

Who cares? Exploring factors that shape our circle of moral concern

Dr Matti Wilks, ESRC NIRG c. £314k, 2024-2027

The research will offer one of the first large-scale, systematic, explorations of how factors about ourselves shape the way we morally value others (as opposed to factors about those being judged). This will provide substantial new knowledge about these factors. It will also offer new insights about how children and adolescents think about the moral value of others, which could be extremely valuable for compassionate education and helping to create a kinder future. And, finally, it will help us to understand whether our findings are applicable to moral behaviour in the real-world, rather than just in the context psychological studies.

Weaponised Pasts: The Evolution of Heritage-based Hostility on Social Media

Dr Zachary Horne, Leverhulme Trust c. £136k, 2025-2028

Interpretations of the human past are routinely weaponised online to frame others as enemies. Such hostility can undermine democratic discourse, cause distress, and translate into violence offline. This is one of the most challenging and unresolved problems within public archaeology, heritage and identity studies today. Without establishing how heritage-based hostile narratives spread, and why some may be pervasive on social media, it has not been possible to determine ways of curtailing this phenomenon. Weaponised Pasts will address this long-standing issue through a novel approach – the first to combine public archaeology, cultural evolution and psychological theory.

Gendered Conceptions of Autonomous Consent: A Philosophical, Psychological and Linguistic Investigation Across Cultures

Dr April Bailey, British Academy c. £43k, 2024-2026

This project investigates how philosophical concepts of autonomy and valid consent are gendered across different cultural and language contexts.

Chronic pain, pain prescribing and cognitive decline: Are women at greater risk?

Dr Chloe Fawns-Ritchie, Alzheimers Society c. £27k, 2026-2027

Chronic pain and the opioid medications often used to treat it have both been linked to faster cognitive decline and higher dementia risk. Compared to men, women are more likely to have chronic pain, often experience pain for longer periods, and are more likely to be prescribed opioids for pain management, often at higher doses and for longer durations. Women also experience more side effects from these medications. At the same time, around two-thirds of people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease—the most common type of dementia—are women. Despite this, most research has not examined whether pain and its treatments affect women and men differently.

Using longitudinal modelling approaches, this project will investigate whether chronic pain and opioid prescribing:

1. contribute to differences in rates of cognitive decline and dementia risk between men and women
2. disproportionately harm women’s cognitive health over time more than men’s

God, Language, and Diversity: Spiritual Flourishing in Neurodiverse and Multilingual Communities

Professor Daniel Mirman, John Templeton Foundation c. £205k, 2024-2026

This project investigates the relationship between linguistic diversity, religious language, and human flourishing by bringing together ten theologians, psychologists, and cognitive scientists to run five distinct, but coordinated, research projects. The project reaches across religious divides by including 2 Jewish, 5 Christian, and 3 agnostic researchers. It will answer two big questions: 1) How does linguistic and cognitive diversity affect humanity’s ability to conceptualize and represent God in the Judaeo-Christian tradition? (2) How do minority speakers thrive in religious communities, and what does this reveal about the relationship between language and human flourishing? This project will make it impossible for credible research into religious language to again overlook the role that linguistic diversity places in the life of faith.