Meet the team - Edge Hill University

Meet the Behavioural Data Service Team

The team has a strong background in academic research, with specialisms ranging from health psychology to neuroscience. Their expertise can support you in taking the next step towards using data to maximise your results.

Inclusive learning and education

Dr John Shaw

I am a specialist in:

cognitive psychology with a focus on sleep research.
how sleep can affect cognitive functioning, such as memory, visual processing, and learning.
social media use in preadolescents.

I can support you by:

designing a research process that is robust, efficient, and tailored to meet your specific objectives.
identifying and implementing the most effective methodologies.
supporting you in building online data collection.
supporting analysis and interpretation.

Health and wellbeing

Dr Jo-Anne Puddephatt

I am a specialist in:

combining large datasets with qualitative methods like interviews and focus groups.
evaluation of health systems to support individuals with co-occurring conditions, emphasising patient and public involvement and stakeholder engagement.

I can support you with:

the interpretation and evaluation of population-level datasets can help identify trends and prevalence within your data.
qualitative research to offer insights into key issues impacting your organisation.
understanding the complexities of data challenges and develop strategies informed by stakeholder perspectives.

Dr Lee Hulbert-Williams

I am a specialist in:

coaching psychology. I am a Chartered Coaching Psychologist.
how professionals self-manage, including career planning, organising day-to-day tasks, and self-management of energy, stress, and burnout.

I can support you to:

define personal and professional values
set goals
self-manage

I can also help your organisation meet various challenges to do with workplace culture and motivation. Psychological measurement can be applied even more widely, to help provide insights into everything from employee stress to customer engagement.

Professor Mark Forshaw

I am a specialist in

health Psychology. I am a Registered Health Psychologist.
helping us to understand how and why people react the way they do to illness
how they make sense of their health

I work across a broad range of mental and physical health conditions, collecting, processing, and analysing relevant health data.

I can talk you through:

key insights in understanding data you already have
how to maximise the value of research you intend to conduct in your organisation.

As a practitioner and a researcher, I bring together the technical aspects of research with the grass-roots appreciation of what people think and feel.

Neuroscience

Dr Joanne Powell

I have expertise in the field of social and cognitive neuroscience. This includes:

functional and structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging
cognitive and neural underpinnings of social communication and behaviour in healthy and patient populations.
social language such as pragmatics, or visual information coming from the social world around us.

I can support you in:

developing and interpreting information from the social and sensory world
looking at the behaviour and interaction with others in different patient groups, including those from a neurodiverse population.

Dr Antonio Capozio

I am a specialist in cognitive neuroscience. I also completed my PhD in biomedical sciences.

My research investigates:

the changes occurring in the central nervous system in response to spinal and brain injury
how to use non-invasive stimulation for neurorehabilitation after injury.

I am experienced in:

protocol design
ethical approval
successful completion of clinical studies involving NHS organisations.

I can advise you on:

medicines and healthcare products
regulatory agency (MHRA) approval for studies involving clinical investigation devices.

Dr Nicola van Rijsbergen

I specialise in the cognitive neuroscience of emotions and facial expressions. This includes:

using brain imaging techniques, such as M/EEG
predicting and analysing people’s emotional responses
understanding differences in emotional responses between individuals (e.g., neurodiversity, age)

I can support you in:

analysing and visualising complex data sets to help you to understand your data
help you collect the kind of data that will answer your questions, and lead to explainable data analysis
help you confidently explain and present your data to stakeholders or the general public

Dr Michel Belyk

I specialise in:

the neuroscience of communication, including, how we speak, sing, and express emotions to understand each other’s minds.

People are trying to tell you something through their data, and I can help you understand them by:

interpreting information from existing data
organising complex data
constructing data visualisations and dashboards to communicate business insights.

Cognitive Processing, perceptions and behaviour

Dr James Brand

I am a specialist in:

cognitive science
how humans learn, process, and understand language
handling complex human behaviour data
creating tailored strategies to uncover valuable insights.

I can support you to:

reach clear solutions that drive informed decision-making.
overcome challenging data problems.
seamlessly integrate customised workflows to meet your specific goals.
gain deeper insights to improve communication strategies and deliver impactful results for internal and client-facing initiatives.

Dr Andrea Piovesan

I expertise lies in cognitive psychology, with a particular focus on perception:

vision
pain
time
typographic perception.

I frequently combine surveys and behavioural tasks with physiological recordings:

heart activity (ECG)
muscle activity (EMG)
skin conductance (EDA)
respiration rate.

I can support you with:

designing and evaluating customer perception research
interpreting psychological and physiological data
analysing large-scale datasets.

Dr Dean Wilkinson

I’m a Chartered Coaching Psychologist, with an interest in:

coaching
how people can live improved lives.

I have extensive experience of evaluation work in the criminal justice settings, and have previously made use of large data sets to explore the relationship between specific variables.

I can help with:

setting up data monitoring
improvement of data quality so that evaluation can be undertaken at a later stage
providing analysis and interpretation to answer key questions.