Home

I am an Assistant Professor at Radboud University, Nijmegen. I investigate the relationship between language and the senses (e.g. smell, vision). One aspect of my work addresses how the perception of odours can be influenced by contextual factors, such as verbal labels and descriptions. I also explore how odour language and cognition recruit resources from other perceptual modalities to aid in meaning.

Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of York, and in the Centre for Language Studies at Radboud University on the NWO VICI project "Human olfaction at the intersection of language, culture, and biology" (PI: Asifa Majid). I completed my PhD in Cognitive, Perceptual, and Brain Sciences at University College London in the Language and Cognition Lab. My thesis investigated an embodied view of language comprehension. That is, to what extent language comprehension involves sensorimotor parts of the brain, systems used to perceive and act in the world. Specifically, my thesis focused on language that describes speed of motion and explored the contributions of vision, audition and action to the comprehension of language about speed, and factors that may affect these contributions.

Before beginning my PhD I studied at the University of Edinburgh where I received a first class MA (Hons) degree in Psychology. Whilst at Edinburgh I worked as a research assistant in the Psycholinguistics and Visual Cognition lab led by Professor Fernanda Ferreira and Professor John Henderson.