School of Psychology

Educational Qualifications and Employment:

• PhD (UNSW)
• M.Clin.Psych. (Macquarie University)
• 2005-Current: SenioLecturer, School of Psychology, University of Sydney
• 2003-2005: Royce Abbey Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Fellowship awarded by the Australian Rotary Health Research Fund, undertaken at Macquarie University
• 2000-2002: Completed postgraduate studies part-time while working as a Clinical Research Assistant at the Macquarie University Anxiety Research Unit

Professional Affiliations and Roles

• Registered Psychologist with Specialisation in Clinical Psychology (Reg. No: PSY0001045344)
• Founding Member, Australian Clinical Psychology Association
• ACPA, Professional Standards and Membership Committee
• Australian Association of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
• Anxiety Practitioners Network
• Former Position on APS College of Clinical Psychologists, NSW Executive Committee

Current & Previous Appointments

2013-present, Professor,School of Psychology, University of Sydney.

2008-2012 QEII Research Fellow, School of Psychology, University of Sydney.

2005-2007 Australian Research Fellow, School of Psychology, University of Sydney.

2003-2005 Australian Research Fellow, School of Medical Sciences, University of Sydney.

2000-2002 Marie Curie Fellow, European Commission, Institute of Neurophysiology, Pisa, Italy.

1998-2000 Research Fellow, Human Frontiers Science Programme, College de France, Paris, France.

1996-1998 Postdoctoral Fellow, Vanderbilt Vision Research Center, Vanderbilt University, USA.

Dr Kirsten Barnes is a Senior Research Fellow and ARC DECRA recipient at the School of Psychology. Her research combines experimental, neurophysiological (e.g., transcranial magnetic stimulation, electroencephalography), and applied research methods to understand how psychological factors (such as expectations and anxiety) impact health outcomes, including pain, nausea, and medication side effects.

Qualifications

PhD Psychology, University of Cambridge

MA Psychology, University of London (Distinction)

BSc Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol (First Class Hons)

Employment

Senior Research Fellow, University of Sydney (2026 - current)

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of New South Wales (2022 - 2026)

Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney (2017 - 2022) 

Alissa is an education-focused academic in the School of Psychology. She is passionate about quality, evidence-based education and the student experience. Her teaching expertise extends to research methods and statistics across all levels of undergraduate psychology.

Prior to joining the University of Sydney, Alissa worked as an academic at Macquarie University after completing her PhD, where she served as undergraduate director of Psychology (2020-2025) and led curriculum changes at multiple levels within Psychology. 

Alissa is currently engaged in a range of educational research projects.  

Damian Patrick Birney (PhD, University of Queensland, Australia) has held positions at Yale University, the University of New South Wales as Director of the Accelerated Learning Laboratory, and the University of Sydney. His research interests are in psychometric assessments and working-memory, fluid intelligence and cognitive flexibility. He is currently exploring the motivational and cognitive factors underlying dynamic assessments of intelligence and training.

Simon Boag (PhD, University of Sydney) is an Associate Professor and education-focused academic specialising in personality dynamics and disorders of personality. He is the author of 'Dissociation and the Dynamics of Personality' (2024) and has served as editor or co-editor for four volumes addressing personality research. He is currently investigating the relation between traumatisation and personality dissociation.

Current & Previous Appointments

2025- Associate Professor, University of Sydney

2006-2024 Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor, Macquarie University

2004-2005 Associate Lecturer, University of Sydney

Professor Michael Bowen is a neuroscientist and psychopharmacologist at the University of Sydney's Brain and Mind Centre and School of Psychology. His research is focused on discovering and developing novel therapeutics for substance use disorders and social challenges in brain disorders.

He is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Kinoxis Therapeutics. Kinoxis was created to commercialise KNX100, a novel molecule which Professor Bowen discovered with colleagues at the University of Sydney. KNX100 has considerable potential to treat addiction and other disorders of the brain and mind.

Professor Bowen is the recipient of numerous awards including the Prime Minister's Prize for New Innovators, Eureka Prize for Outstanding Early Career Researcher, the NSW Premier's Prize for Early Career Researcher of the Year, and the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society Early Career Award.

Dr Laura Bradfield is a Senior Lecturer and head of the Neuroscience of Action Control and Compulsivity Lab in the School of Psychology at University of Sydney, which she joined in September 2025.

Laura’s primary areas of interest include investigating the behavioural and brain mechanisms of compulsive disorders, the astrocytic mechanisms of goal-directed decision-making, and contextual and attentional modulation of actions. Her work is currently funded an NHMRC Ideas Grants, and she has previously been awarded an ARC Discovery Project as well as three NHMRC grants. In total Laura’s research has attracted approximately $3.5 million.

Laura has published 40+ journal articles and three book chapters and has spoken widely about her research at conferences and events in Australia and overseas. Her proudest career moment was winning the UTS Faculty of Science’s “Supervisor of the Year” award in 2022, for which she was nominated by her students. Laura is passionate about increasing diversity in science and improving conditions within the scientific community for underrepresented individuals.

Academic Positions

Senior lecturer, School of Psychology, University of Sydney, 2005 to present.

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, 1998 to 2005

Academic Qualifications

BSc (hons): University of Melbourne, Australia, 1987

PhD: University of California, Los Angeles, 1994

Academic & Professional Qualifications

Master of Public Health (University of Sydney), 1994

Ph.D. (Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney), 1991

Registered psychologist (NSW Psych Reg Board), 1991

Australian Society of Hypnosis Certificate, 1988

Marriage Guidance Certificate, 1982

Master of Clinical Psychology (Aust. National Uni.), 1982

B.A. (Hons: Class 1) Dip. Ed. (Macquarie Uni.), 1979

Dr Rachel Campbell is a Senior Research Fellow at the Psycho-Oncology Co-operative Research Group (PoCoG) at the University of Sydney. Dr Campbell's research aims to optimise the assessment of quality of life and symptom burden in cancer clinical trials and practice, to ensure these issues are accurately identified, documented and appropriately managed. Her research also aims to develop, evaluate and implement supportive care interventions to alleviate this burden and improve patients’ overall quality of life. Dr Campbell has extensive experience conducting both quantitative and qualitative research, and developing and validating patient-reported outcome measures for use in clinical trials and clinical practice. 

Current & Previous Appointments

2016-present Associate Professor, University of Sydney

2013-2016 ARC Future Fellow/Senior Lecturer, Macquarie University

2008-20013 Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, USA

2004-2008 Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University/University of Utrecht

Michael Cavanagh is both a Coaching and Clinical Psychologist. He holds a BA (Hons - 1st class) in Psychology from the University of Sydney, and a PhD and Masters of Clinical Psychology from Macquarie University. His doctoral research explored the impact of cognitive and behavioural patterns on health-related anxiety.

Michael is currently the Deputy Director of the Coaching Psychology Unit at the University of Sydney, where he and his colleague, Anthony Grant, have developed the world's first degree programme in coaching. The Coaching Psychology Unit is considered to be a world leader in coaching psychology, and students regularly travel from Europe, the US, Asia and the Middle East to attend their degree courses and shorter professional development workshops.

A registered psychologist, Michael has 20 years experience in facilitating personal, group and organizational change. He has designing and facilitated training and personal development workshops in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. His has worked in a variety of public and private enterprises, both in Australia and internationally. He has coached a wide range of individuals, drawn from every level of management, and from a diverse range of organizations

As a presenter, Michael is consistently rated as excellent by students, audiences, and workshop participants. His research and practice have been reported in the national media, and he has a number of publications in the academic press and has presented at numerous international conferences.

Michael is well respected in the coaching community. He was twice elected National Convenor of the Australian Psychological Society Interest Group in Coaching Psychology - a body of the APS with over 650 members. He also holds the position of Co-ordinating Editor of the International Coaching Psychology Review - an international journal jointly published by the Australian and British Psychological Societies.

Michael was invited by Standards Australia to be the principle author of the Handbook of organisational coaching. This is in its final editing stage. Standards Australia is an International Standards Organisation member, and the Handbook of Organisational coaching is the world's most comprehensive standard of coaching service provision, knowledge, competencies and training to date. It is also the first coaching standard to be created under an ISO aligned national stardards body. .

Michael was also a key instigator of the Global Convention on Coaching - a forum created for bringing together a range of coaching bodies internationally to discuss the future of coaching and coach education. And was one also of 4 inaugural members of the international advisory panel for the Harnish Foundation Coaching research fund, a not for profit, New York based organisation founded to promote excellence in coaching worldwide.

Ben Colagiuri is Professor of Psychology and Co-Director, Discovery and Translation, at the Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney. He received his PhD in Psychology from the University of Sydney in 2010. His research examines how expectations, information, and social context shape health outcomes, with a particular focus on placebo and nocebo effects.

Ben has developed novel experimental models to investigate placebo and nocebo mechanisms across pain, sleep, nausea, and related conditions. His current research explores how knowledge of placebo and nocebo effects can be used ethically to improve patient outcomes, reduce treatment-related harms, and inform clinical communication.

He has secured more than $7 million in competitive research funding, incluidng ARC Future Fellowship, published more than 100 scientific papers, and received national and international recognition for his work. His awards include the International Association for the Study of Pain Patrick D. Wall Young Investigator Prize, the Australian Psychological Society Media Award for Public Engagement, and the International Society of Behavioural Medicine Early Career Award.

Ben previously served as Head of the School of Psychology and as a member of the Academic Board. He is also President of the International Society for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies.

Dr Nathan Cross is a sleep neuroscientist and Senior Research Fellow in the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney. His research investigates how sleep supports memory, cognition and brain health across adulthood and ageing, with a particular focus on sleep physiology, functional neuroimaging and neurodegenerative disease. He combines polysomnography (PSG), EEG, MRI and computational methods to identify objective markers of individual differences in sleep and cognitive function. He also leads research examining sleep-dependent memory consolidation and the effects of sleep loss on brain network organisation. Dr Cross is Chair of the Sydney Sleep and Circadian Network and leads an ARC Discovery Project investigating sleep-based predictors of memory.

I am a clinical psychologist interested in the development of health versus psychopathology, especially common problems like aggression, antisocial behaviour, anxiety and depression. Originally trained in behavioural approaches to parent and family methods of maximising positive child development, I direct the Sydney Child Behaviour Research Clinic which operates as a clinical service for parents of children with developmental, behavioural and emotional problems, as well a training and research centre. A major thrust of this work is understanding interparental processes whereby parental systems work together to maximise child outcomes and their own health and happiness.

I also have a growing interest in how the parenting environment operates and gets trapped in, causal loops wih fundamental biological characteristics of the child related to the major neurodevelopmental systems of dopamine, cortisol, serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin.To this extent, I have become increasingly interested in research and clinical work that tries to map our most human interpersonal processes such as love, empathy, cooperation and coercion onto the genetics and neural function of these major systems and builds them into new more efficacious treatments for young children.

Dr Marshall Dalton is a cognitive neuroscientist at the Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney, investigating how the brain enables us to remember our experiences, navigate the world around us and create mental images of objects, places and scenes. His scientific career has centred on the hippocampus, a small but intricately organised brain structure often described as the brain’s “memory centre”. Beyond its essential contribution to memory, the hippocampus supports spatial navigation, visuospatial processing and aspects of mental imagery. Marshall’s research asks how its complex anatomy and connections with the wider brain make this cognitive versatility possible, with a particular interest in how we construct and reconstruct experiences in the mind’s eye.

Rather than viewing the hippocampus as a single, uniform structure, Marshall investigates its specialised subregions and the distinct brain networks in which they participate. By combining detailed neuroanatomy with advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), he examines how these regions contribute to different aspects of memory and mental imagery, including our ability to construct coherent mental scenes. A defining feature of his work is the development of methods that improve the anatomical precision with which these systems can be mapped, revealing how the fine-grained organisation of the brain supports our internal representations of the world.

Marshall received his PhD in cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, in 2014 under the supervision of Professors Olivier Piguet and Michael Hornberger. He subsequently undertook postdoctoral training with Professor Eleanor Maguire at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, specialising in structural and functional neuroimaging of human memory systems. He further developed his expertise through research in diffusion MRI with Professor Fernando Calamante at the University of Sydney and in neuroanatomy with Professor George Paxinos at UNSW. This multidisciplinary training underpins his integrated approach to understanding the anatomy, connectivity and function of the brain’s memory systems.

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy, University of British Columbia (2008)
• Master of Arts, University of British Columbia (2004)
• Bachelor (Double Major), University of Haifa (2001)
  • Psychology, Magna Cum Laude
  • "Ofakim" - University of Haifa Interdisciplinary Honors Program