Role
Maria is a Principal Lecturer in Psychology with a particular responsibility for staff development and staff wellbeing.
She teaches on several undergraduate modules, including:
- Social and Lifespan Developmental Psychology
- Gender, Identity and Body Image
- The Psychology of Sex.
Maria supervises projects at undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD level.
Opportunities to carry out postgraduate research towards an MPhil/PhD exist in the following areas:
- intimate relationships
- online relationships
- infidelity
- uses of social networking sites in education
- gay and lesbian psychology.
Further information may be obtained from the NTU Doctoral School.
Research areas
Maria's research interests lie within Social Psychology. She is currently interested in research on Intimate Relationships, Relationship Conflict, Sexuality, LGBT psychology, LGBT experiences in Sporting contexts, Masculinity and Femininity and Stereotyping.
In terms of supervision, her interests are varied and wide ranging. For Maria, it is less about the specific topic and more about how an 'old' issue can be examined in a new way using the social psychological lens. Some of the projects she has supervised in the last 12 years fall under the following terms:
- Intimate Relationships
- Relationship Conflict
- Sexuality
- LGBT psychology
- LGBT experiences in sporting contexts
- Masculinity and Femininity
- Stereotyping
- Domestic Violence
- Honour Based Violence (HBV)
- Military Psychology.
Publications
Akingbala, L. A. X., & Kontogianni, M. (2013). Spoilsports: how do gender and sexuality non-conforming athletes participate in the resistant heteronormative sporting climate?. Psychology of sexualities review, 4(1).
Blackburn, A. M., Han, H., Gelpí, R. A., Stöckli, S., Jeftić, A., Ch'ng, B., ... & COVIDiSTRESS II Consortium. (2023). Mediation analysis of conspiratorial thinking and anti-expert sentiments on vaccine willingness. Health Psychology, 42(4), 235.
Blackburn, A. M., & Vestergren, S. (2022). COVIDiSTRESS diverse dataset on psychological and behavioural outcomes one year into the COVID-19 pandemic. Scientific data, 9(1), 331.
Press expertise
- Sexual disorders
- Online identity
- Conflict
- Stereotyping
- Attraction
- Cheating in relationships
- Intimate relationships
- Jealousy
- Gay parenting
- Sexuality