People

Kami Koldewyn (Lab Director)

Kami completed a BA at Pomona College (Claremont CA, USA) in music and philosophy before working in education for a number of years. She then completed a PhD in neuroscience at the University of California, Davis (USA) with Susan Rivera and Randi Hagerman, followed by postdoctoral work in the Kanwisher lab in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT (USA). Kami has been on the faculty at Bangor since 2013. Her research is currently focused on social perception and how it, and the brain systems that support it, change across development.  When not in the lab, Kami can be found in her garden, playing on the beaches of Anglesey with her dogs, or curled up in a chair with a good book.

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Mae Bernard (PhD Student)

Born in England, Mae moved to Wales in 2018 to study a BSc in Psychology at Bangor University. After receiving an Inclusive Bangor Scholarship, Mae immediately followed their undergraduate degree with an MSc in Neuroimaging at Bangor. They then joined the Developmental Social Vision Lab as a PhD student in 2022 after receiving competitive PhD funding from the ESRC Wales Doctoral Training Program (now the Welsh Graduate School for the Social Sciences).

Mae's research is currently focused on how empathy towards, social judgements of, and interactions with robots are altered by a wide range of factors, including type of shared experience, human likeness, and social behaviour. Their other research interests include pain research, trans studies, and endocrinology.

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Laura Jastrzab (PhD Student)

Laura is an American who has lived all over the US. She more recently moved to the UK from the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia, and joined Dr. Koldewyn's lab in Autumn 2018. Prior to pursuing a PhD, Laura worked in several large US research institutions and has also worked as a registered Educational Psychologist in the UK and US. 

Laura is interested in understanding more about how humans perceive human and non-human social interactions and the neural mechanisms involved in these social interactions. Further, she would like to understand how these perceptions might be different across the lifespan, between cultures, and between those with typical and atypical development. 

In her free time she enjoys cooking, gardening, diy projects, and getting outdoors (especially along the coastline or in the mountains outside her home).

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Deyan Mitev (PhD Student)

Originally from Bulgaria, Deyan moved to North Wales in 2019 to study at Bangor University. After completing BSc Psychology with Neuropsychology in 2022, he was awarded a competitive 1+3 studentship from the Welsh Graduate School for the Social Sciences to work with Paul Downing and Kami. He completed a MSc Psychological Research in 2023 and is currently working towards a PhD.

Deyan’s main research interests include social perception and social cognition more generally. His PhD is focused on the representations of different social perceptual categories (such as age, sex, gender., etc), both neurally and conceptually, and how they contribute towards face, body and whole-person perception.

Deyan’s main hobbies include Mechanical Keyboards and discovering different Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and their uses. In his free time, he also enjoys making statistics and research memes, playing board games and computer games (particularly Virtual Reality titles), and exploring concrete jungles. 

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Kiran Morris (PhD Student)

Hailing from the serene landscapes of North Wales, Kiran made the choice to pursue her education amidst the picturesque landscapes of home. Her initial interest in psychology stemmed from two core aspects of her life. Growing up in a culturally diverse family sparked a keen interest in understanding how peoples’ perspectives are shaped by their culture and environment, and how every person perceives the world through their own unique perceptual ‘window’. Secondly, becoming a mother to a joyful and energetic boy with ASD, Kiran developed a more specific interest in understanding the perceptions of neurodivergent people.

Kiran completed her BSc in Psychology and MSc in Clinical Neuropsychology from Bangor University in 2022/2023. Currently pursuing her Ph.D., her research interests involve investigating how people process information from social interactions, and the processing differences between neurotypical people and people with ASD. In her free time, she enjoys many things; whether it’s hiking, exploring, reading, writing, painting, board games or video games, Kiran embraces all of these interests with the enthusiasm of someone embarking on an epic adventure.

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Lois Pierce-Jones (PhD Student)

Lois completed a BSc Applied Psychology at Cardiff University in 1991, gained a PGCE at Leicester University in 1995 and taught A Level Psychology for three years on the South coast of England. Spending time with young people and sharing their concerns and aspirations led her to choose a career in Educational Psychology, so she gained her Educational Psychology MSc at Cardiff University in 1999. Lois has been an Educational Psychologist Practitioner working in local education authorities since then, taking career breaks to relocate to beautiful North Wales, raise her family and has been adding to her skill-set with hypnotherapy and stress management, coaching skills, CBT, and developing specialisms in SpLD and ASD. Lois joined the Developmental Social Vision Lab in 2018 to work as a Research Support Officer on the ERC funded Becoming Social project looking at social development during the transition between childhood and adolescence.  When not in the lab, Lois has an independent Educational Psychology practice.  She keeps geese and relaxes by walking in the mountains or beaches of Gwynedd, or sailing on the Menai Straits.

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Siwan Roberts (PhD Student)

Siwan is a Clinical Psychologist working part-time for the NHS while working on her PhD. Originally from Northeast Wales, and a native Welsh speaker, Siwan completed her BSc Psychology at Cardiff University in 2002 and later her MPhil in Developmental Psychology in 2010. Before returning to North Wales as a trainee Clinical Psychologist (graduating in 2012), she accumulated various work experience, both academic and clinical, across different area of the UK. Siwan has a long-standing academic interest in the early development of empathy and mind-understanding. Clinically, she values trauma-informed ways of working and formulating children's presenting difficulties with reference to their social context. Siwan's PhD work will be focused on inter-generational adversity and the development of empathy (cognitive and affective) in parent-child dyads. To answer her research questions, she will be drawing from longitudinal and neuroimaging data. Siwan is the mother of two young boys. On the rare occasions when she has spare time, she enjoys stand-up comedy, travelling, learning about different cultures, and drinking wine.

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Ananda Zeas-Sigüenza (visiting PhD student)

Ananda was born and raised in Ecuador. She's lived a gypsy life since she left her country and lecturer positions to pursue a career in in research. With her Psychology degree "under her arm", she moved to Chile to do her first master's degree. This research focused on creating, applying, and validating a leadership program for rural women focused on increasing four key leadership abilities (self-value, decision-making, assertive communication, emotional regulation). Next, Ananda moved to Portugal and joined the  Proaction Lab to learn cognitive neuroscience research, then moved to Spain to do a second masters in Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience investigating the relationship between stress and addiction. Although her background is diverse, she’s always been committed to deliver tools for well-being and loneliness. Today she is a Ph.D. student at the Public University of Navarre (UPNA) supported by the predoctoral grant UPNA-Fundación Caja Navarre. She joined the Developmental Social Vision Lab as a visiting Ph.D. student in November 2022 (additionally funded by the Government of Navarre) to analyse whether chronically lonely people process dynamic social information differently from non-lonely people. In her spare time, she’s exploring new places and sharing quality time with her life partner, Javi.

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Rachel Newey (former PhD Student)

Rachel came to the field of Social Neuroscience later in life, following years of pondering why people do what they do and how they are capable of both spectacular cognition and mind boggling failures. An abundance of reading and online learning sparked an interest in the brain, its evolution and problems following injury or associated with developmental conditions. So she embarked on a MSc in Neuropsychology at Bangor University in 2015. During her PhD, co-supervised by Dr. Ramsey and Dr. Koldewyn, she would like to further her understanding of social learning, individual differences and investigate the nuances of imitation. She is interested in how a person develops typical social functioning as well as the causes and consequences of atypical social orientations, such as those seen in autism. Cultural norms are ingrained in each of us, so disentangling the relationship between innate motivation and neural functioning from culturally constructed behaviour is at the heart of her curiosity. Better understanding those who are not afflicted with obsessive sociableness may help us to investigate learning in isolation. Eventually, she would love to align that knowledge with learning and innovation in our great, non-human relatives. Rachel completed her PhD in 2021 and is now a lecturer at Bangor, with a focus on teaching.

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Ioana Mihai (former PhD student and Postdoctoral Research Officer)

Ioana is Romanian, even though she has lived in Italy for half of her life, where got her Masters in Psychology in 2015 . After a period of experience in clinical research working on social cognition in different neurological conditions, she moved to the UK in the fall of 2017 to pursue her PhD. Her main interest is the human ability to perceive social interactions, how this ability changes across the lifespan, and how it is influenced by our social network and emotional world. Ioana completed her PhD in 2021, and is now doing Postdoctoral work in the lab driving forward novel eye-tracking studies. When not in the lab, you can find her hiking and discovering new places or reading creepy books. In her ideal place there’s an army of dogs, shelves full of books and her collection of globes. Ioana completed her PhD in 2021, completed a one-year postdoc in the lab and is now a lecturer at Aberystwyth University.

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Julia Landsiedel (former Postdoctoral Research Officer)

Originally from Germany, Julia moved to the UK in 2014 to study the mechanisms of prospective memory in autism spectrum disorders for her PhD project at the University of Kent.  In autumn 2017, she moved to Bangor to join the team of the "Becoming Social" Project as a postdoctoral researcher.   As part of this project, her research will focus on the study of developmental change in social perception, social learning and the social brain in late-childhood/early adolescence.  Her inner geek is excited to get their hands on all things technical related to programming and neuroimaging in the pursuit to disentangle the mysteries of the social brain. In her spare time, she can either be found in the kitchen concocting mixtures for her bakes, or out and about exploring her new Welsh home. While Julia still works with the lab on completing projects, she has now joined the UK Ministry of Justice as a Senior Data Scientist.

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Caroline Parkinson (former Research Support Officer)

Caroline trained and practised as a nurse at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge before changing track to become the Neuroanatomy lab manager in the Experimental Psychology Department at Cambridge University. In parallel, she completed a part-time degree in Psychology. In 2004, she moved up to Bangor University and has worked on several research projects relating to cognitive function in aging including Cognitive Rehabilitation in patients with early Alzheimer’s. Caroline also manages the Neuroanatomical Lab in the Psychology Department. In 2017, she joined the Developmental Social Vision Lab to work as Research Project Support Officer on the ERC funded Becoming Social project looking at social development during the transition between childhood and adolescence. An ideal day for Caroline includes nurturing vegetables and flowers in the garden, and getting into the great outdoors with her dog. Caroline continues to be a social member of the lab, but her work at the University is now focused on cataloguing and maintaining the University's collection of human anatomical specimens, particularly the set of brains that support our teaching about brain anatomy.  

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