Public Engagement

I often demonstrate visual illusions as part of my public engagement and have done so at the British Science Festival in 2012 and at the Colour Clash event at Aberdeen Art Gallery during the 2014 Explorathon (European Researchers' Night). The focus at Colour Clash was on colour illusions, as the event was connected to the exhibition by Kaffe Fassett, an artist who is renowned for his use of colour. I also used to do demonstrations at Aberdeen School of Psychology's open days (where we sometimes brought out the departmental Beuchet chair, to everyone's delight!) and at participant panel events.

When #thedress happened, similarly to other colour vision experts, I also had my 15 minutes of fame, giving a talk on colour constancy during British Science Week and also being interviewed for the Press and Journal and the Evening Express (both are local Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire newspapers).

In 2019, I presented a well-received Cafe Scientifique on my EPSRC-funded interdisciplinary work with computer science aimed at developing new display technologies. In 2020, I was asked to deliver a talk for the Aberdeen Art Gallery on how noisiness is an integral part of our sensory processing, which was aligned with some of the themes covered by Haroon Mirza's exhibition. Both the exhibition and the talk took a virtual form after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2023, I gave a talk on colour as part of the Curious Minds series in Perth.

I'm a STEM ambassador and am happy to get involved in any public engagement events that have something to do with perception, e.g. I've volunteered before for Lab in a Lorry, giving demonstrations of optical phenomena.