My research career started as an undergraduate student in the 1980’s carrying out a research project on visual motion perception under the supervison of Laurence Harris (now at North York University, Toronto) and Andy Smith (Royal Holloway University). This sparked an interest in visual and behavioural neuroscience which led to a job as a perceptual psychologist at a flight simulator manufacturer in Gatwick. After 2 years in the private sector I commenced study for a PhD at Birkbeck college, University of London, researching the cognitive and neural systems involved in the control of human eye movements and visual attention supervised by Prof. Hermann Muller.

Following my doctorate I was employed as a post-doctoral research fellow on a Wellcome Trust program grant held by Christopher Kennard (now at University of Oxford) and the late Leslie Henderson at Charing Cross Hospital London, investigating the role of fronto-striatal brain circuits in oculomotor control. 

In 2002 I accepted a lectureship in cognitive psychology at the University of Exeter. In May 2003 I was awarded a 3 year project grant by the Wellcome Trust to forward my research into the control and self-monitoring functions of the human frontal cerebral cortex. The project resulted in four peer reviewed publications in high ranking journals, including a major study of response inhibition and rule switching in patients with focal frontal damage published in Brain. In 2008-2009 I was awarded a Wellcome Trust sabbatical grant to pursue my research studies at the Behavioural and Clinical Neurosciences Institute, University of Cambridge.

I was appointed as Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Lincoln in September 2011 to join a growing team of researchers in the Cognition Perception and Action group. I served as research director from 2011-2013 and took the lead in overseeing the Schools submission to the 2014 Research Excellence Framework assessment. In 2012 I was awarded a 2 year Knowledge Transfer Partnership grant by the Technology Strategy Board and Medical Research Council to work with the WESC Foundation specialist centre for visual impairment. In 2016, Lincoln collaborator Dr Frouke Hermans and I won a British Academy / Leverhulme Trust grant to examine social attention and interaction in people with Parkinson.

Between August 2013 and July 2017 I was Head of the School of Psychology University of  Lincoln. From 2017 to 2019 I was co-investigator with Prof. Carenza Lewis on a UKRI funded project to enhance public engagement with research at the University of Lincoln (PEARL). 

I led the impact component of the School of Psychology’s submission to the 2022 Research Excellence Framework assessment in my capacity as School Impact Champion.