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Harriet Smith

Harriet Smith

Senior Lecturer

School of Social Sciences

Staff Group(s)
Psychology

Role

Harriet is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology.

Career overview

Harriet studied for her undergraduate degree in History at the University of Cambridge (2004-2008). At NTU she completed the MSc Psychology conversion course (2011-2012), and her PhD on ‘Matching novel face and voice identity using static and dynamic facial images’ (2013-2016).

Harriet was an ECR fellow at NTU from 2017 to 2023.

Research areas

Harriet is an applied cognitive psychologist specialising in facial and vocal identity discrimination in forensic and security contexts. Her research focuses on 1) improving perpetrator identification from face and voice lineups by eye- and earwitnesses, and 2) optimising identity verification (e.g., from ID photos or covert voice recordings). Harriet’s work aims to reduce the risk of miscarriages of justice, increase police efficiency, and support national security.

For recent pre-prints, please see PsyArXiv

External activity

Member of the British Psychological Society

Member of the BPS Cognitive Psychology Section and elected member of the BPS Cognitive Section Committee

Associate Editor of the Cognitive Psychology Bulletin

Member of the Experimental Psychology Society

Review Editor, Frontiers in Psychology (Forensic and Legal Psychology Section)

Awards

2016 PsyPAG Rising Researcher

Sponsors and collaborators

External collaborators include:

  • Dr Heather Flowe and Dr Melissa Colloff (University of Birmingham)
  • Dr Kirsty McDougall and Professor Francis Nolan (University of Cambridge)
  • Dr Katrin Mueller-Johnson (University of Oxford)
  • Professor Josh Davis (University of Greenwich)
  • Dr Nadine Lavan (QMUL)

Harriet was a co-investigator on 'Improving voice identification procedures', a project funded by the ESRC (£700,000, PI: Dr Kirsty Mcdougall). In 2017 Harriet was awarded a £9,722 research grant from the British Academy ('Developing a procedure for eliciting accurate, detailed, and consistent forensic voice descriptions from lay witnesses').