Dr Mary Spiller

Biography

Mary is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology. She is Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a member of the British Psychological Society (Cognitive Section), the Experimental Psychology Society and British Neuropsychological Society. Mary teaches and supervises students on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes within the School, and is Deputy Programme Leader of the MSc Psychology. She is the chair of the School's Research Ethics Committee. Mary is a member of the Cognition and Neuroscience Research Group. Mary was awarded her PhD from UEL in 2009, and previously has worked at both the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London and Harvard University.

Research Interest

Mary's research focuses on how we make sense of the world around us, with a particular interest in our internal representations of the external world. This includes sensory experiences such as synaesthesia (cross-sensory experiences), mental imagery (internally generated sensory experiences) and multi-sensory experiences in the general population. Her research has particularly focused on synaesthesia and mental imagery, and the impact of synaesthesia on other cognitive abilities. Recent work has focused on the impact synaesthesia may have on mental imagery abilities across various sensory modalities, as well as exploring multi-sensory processing in the general population. Current projects are exploring the impact of emotion on our mental imagery abilities.