Role
James is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology. His main teaching areas include tutorials for first year Single Honours (SH) Psychology undergraduates and for the students on the MSc Psychology conversion course. He is also module leader for Cognitive Psychology on the MSc course and teaches Research Methods for the SH Psychology.
Research areas
James' main research interests:
- Perception and cognition in relation to social networks
- Evolutionary psychology
- Theory of mind and social clique formation
- Visual perception of patterns
James is happy to supervise projects in the following areas:
- Evolutionary psychology (e.g. kin selection and altruism)
- Evolutionary psychology in English literature
- Evolutionary and cognitive basis of social network formation
- Theory of mind and language
- Number estimation and maths comprehension
- Pattern recognition in early visual perception
Sponsors and collaborators
Collaborators:
- Professor Robin Dunbar (University of Liverpool) as part of the University of Liverpool Evolutionary Psychology group, investigating Theory of Mind ability as a constraint on the formation of human social support groups.
- Dr Daniel Nettle from University of Newcastle (along with Professor Dunbar) investigating social networks within the plays of William Shakespeare.