Martin Thirkettle

As a lecturer, I split my time between teaching and research. I teach on a number of cognitive psychology and research methods modules. My research focuses on cognitive behavioural neuroscience and, broadly, my research interests lie in the way visual information is perceived and then used in cognitive mechanisms to produce behaviour.

After receiving my BA in Psychology from the University of Sussex in 2004, I completed my PhD in 2010 at the University of Bristol. In my PhD I used psychophysics to investigate the visual perception of biological motion - the movement of other people as opposed to that of inanimate objects.

After my PhD I moved to the University of Sheffield where I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate. Here, I employed the experimental methods and stimulus control of psychophysics to allow behavioural responses to test neuroanatomical hypotheses about the contribution of various brain structures to action-outcome learning.

Following this I spent four years at The Open University as a lecturer in the Psychology department, focussing on undergraduate and postgraduate cognitive psychology modules. During this time I became interested in moving my research out of the lab and using online tools or mobile phone apps to study cognitive performance, both in large cohorts and in expert groups.