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Prof Graham Edgar

Professor of Psychology and Applied Neuroscience

I became a psychologist by accident, but have never regretted it. It's given me the opportunity to study a range of fascinating topics (perception, human error, brain activity, emotion) in a range of fascinating settings all over the world.

Biography

Graham’s career has been spent working both in industry (BAE Systems – formerly British Aerospace) and academia – and his research background can best be described as eclectic, spanning neuroscience, psychology, clinical psychophysics, optometry, and human factors in a wide range of contexts. The unifying theme has always been how humans make sense of the world, and what happens when they don’t. An early interest in perception developed into an interest in how people are fooled by illusions and ‘magic’. A later interest in human factors developed into an interest in how people are fooled by the world, and how this can lead to (military, medical, fireground and driving) accidents.

Qualifications

  • BSc (Hons): Psychology, York University, 1984
  • MSc: Psychological Research Methods, Open University, 2014
  • PhD: Visual Psychophysics, Keele University, 1989

Awards

Fire/Gore Research Excellence Award (best poster), 2011.

Fire/Gore Research Excellence Award (best paper), 2012.

Outstanding Paper Award Winner at the Emerald Literati Network 2013 Awards for Excellence

Membership of professional bodies

British Psychologial Society (Associate Fellow, Chartered Psychologist, Chartered Scientist).

Higher Education Academy (Fellow)

Applied Vision Association

Teaching & Research

Teaching

Cognitive Neuroscience and Cognitive Neuropsychology

Human Factors

Applied Cognitive Psychology

Research

Graham’s current research interests are in the application of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience methods to ‘real-world’ issues such as situation awareness in pressured and safety-critical domains including driving, health, military and firefighting. Graham and his colleagues have, over many years, developed novel models and methods of measuring situation awareness, underpinned by neuroscience.

In order to better understand the workings of the human mind when things go wrong, Graham now uses two mind-reading methods: electroencephalography (EEG), which works quite well – and magic, which doesn’t. This may be because, despite his best efforts, Graham is a psychologist and a neuroscientist – not a magician.

External responsibilities

Graham has also been involved in consultancy work on psychological issues with driving, and acts as an expert witness. He regularly publishes in scholarly journals and has written material for undergraduate textbooks at all levels.

Subject for media interview

Situation awareness

Driver behaviour

Human error

Mobile phone use

External examining

University of South Wales (2009-2013) University of Northampton (2013-2017)