Dr Paul Toner

Dr Toner is the Postdoctoral Researchers' Advisor for the School.

Dr Sara Lorimer

Dr Lorimer is the Postdoctoral Researchers' Representative for the School.

Amy completed her BSc in Psychology, MSc in Political Psychology and PhD in Psychology at QUB.

Amy is a social psychologist, with a primary interest in investigating attitudes & responses towards increasing gender diversity in traditionally masculine domains such as STEM. As well as other research interests within the field of social psychology more broadly, including gender biases/stereotypes associated with female leadership, intergroup threat, and social identity.

Amy is currently working as a Research Fellow on the EPSRC “Inclusion Really Does Matter” project team, conducting both qualitative & quantitative research to evaluate the effectiveness of a set of resources in improving STEM academics’ attitudes towards Gender Equality Initiatives within their domain.

Amy also works part time as a Teaching Fellow within the department.

Marc is a Research Fellow and member of the CIHRQoL, currently involved in collaborative projects with external academic and public health partners. Coming from a Clinical Psychology background (MSc), Marc is especially interested in individuals’ mental and physical health, and behaviour change.

Since completing his PhD at QUB, Marc has been working as an Applied Psychologist on projects related to promoting positive health-related behaviours in public health settings. His current research involves a behavioural intervention (DR-BNI) which promotes positive oral health-related behaviours to help prevent the recurrence of tooth decay in children.

Marc is a Chartered Member of the BPS (CPsychol), Associate Member of the UK Trials Managers Network (UKTMN), Full Member of the UK Society for Behavioural Medicine (UKSBM), and holds Associate Fellow status with the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA).

Bethany completed her undergraduate psychology degree at QUB in 2017, before finishing her PhD in 2021. Bethany's PhD focussed on children's choices to help others, and their emotions following choices which led to poor outcomes for others.

Bethany has now joined the 'Communicating Truth' and 'Helping Kids!' projects led by Dr. Jocelyn Dautel and Dr. Laura Taylor. These projects examine intergroup processes, including how information is communicated across group boundaries, and how shared identity can promote positive intergroup relationships.

Emily a Senior Research Fellow currently working at the Stress Trauma and Related Conditions (STARC) Research Centre based in the Psychology Department, QUB.

Emily is also a BPS-accredited Low-Intensity CBT (LI-CBT) therapist with over three years of clinical experience working across a range of both statutory and non-statutory mental health services.

Emily currently works across several high-profile mental health research projects based at QUB such as the MI-VIDA Project, the UK Veteran Family Study, the COVID-19 Psychological Wellbeing Study and Mood Movement.

Martin currently works on the MI-VIDA Project, an investigation examining biopsychosocial risk and resilience factors for mental ill-health following traumatic stress in Colombia. Martin completed his PhD with QUB, School of Psychology. Martin’s thesis entitled “A Quantitative Investigation of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Among Military Veterans in Northern Ireland” was completed alongside the Northern Ireland Veteran Health and Well-being Study. Martin’s main research interests are concerned with the study of psychotraumatology, mental health, and with encouraging positive reproductive and relationship health among males.

Jennifer is a Senior research fellow with the School of Psychology, currently leading the NIHR funded COHERE project which aims to understand the determinants of COVID Health Related Behaviour.  Jennifer is also an Editor with the Campbell Education Coordinating Group and sits on the advisory board of Evidence Synthesis Ireland. Jennifer has worked in evidence synthesis since 2012, publishing systematic reviews and evidence syntheses products with Campbell, Cochrane and NIHR Health Technology Assessment amongst others. She is interested in making evidence more relevant, accessible, and useful for the people who may benefit from better use of evidence and policymakers who can use evidence to inform decisions.

Jennifer has a PhD in psychology and an enduring interest in children’s health and wellbeing, infant feeding and the impact of childhood maltreatment and trauma.

Outside of Queen's, Dr Hanratty works with the Centre for Effective Services (CES) on projects to improve public services through the use of evidence. She is also founder and director of Breastival, a multi-award-winning Breastfeeding Festival aimed at normalising, supporting and celebrating Breastfeeding in Northern Ireland.

Julie started working with the School of Psychology in October 2021 after working as a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the Centre for Public Health for almost four years. Julie’s background is in health promotion and general public health with much of her research experience to date having a qualitative focus. Julie really enjoys chatting to people and seeing how research can make a difference to people’s lives.

Julie is working with the SPINE-COS-AYA study, lead by Dr Lisa Graham-Wisener and Dr Paul Toner. Through this project the team are hoping to develop a person-centred core outcome set for adolescents and young adults with spinal deformity undergoing treatment by engaging with patients, family members and healthcare professionals to generate a comprehensive and meaningful long list of candidate outcome domains for spinal treatment. This will form the foundation of a methodologically robust, capacity building approach to agree an internationally applicable person-centred core outcome set.

Salvador is Doctor in Communication by the University of Salamanca. His research specializes in computer-mediated communication, social media, and virtual environments. Dr Alvidrez also investigates cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioural effects derived from virtual environments, which includes impression formation, intergroup communication, and prejudice-reduction in online settings. Dr Alvidrez applies quantitative research methods such as experiments, content analysis, and linguistic analysis, but also qualitative methods.

Salvador is a member of the scientific board of the journal Computers in Human Behaviour and is currently a member of the Mexican System of Researchers (SNI 1).

Salvador was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Davis, the Texas A&M International University and the University of Münster, before being appointed as a Research Professor at the University of Monterrey. He is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow based at the School of Psychology in Queen’s University Belfast.