Dr Rebecca Brewer
principal investigator
Dr Brewer is a Senior Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London. She completed her undergraduate degree in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, an MSc in Developmental Sciences at Birkbeck College, London, and a PhD in Psychology at King’s College London, supervised by Prof. Geoff Bird.
Her research focuses on social, emotional, and interoceptive abilities across a range of clinical and non-clinical populations. This includes the recognition of emotional and non-emotional internal states in the self and others, and recognition of others' facial identity. Rebecca is especially interested in how alexithymia and interoception are related to the emotional and social difficulties sometimes seen in conditions such as autism and eating disorders.
Dr Brewer is Primary Investigator on a Medical Research Council New Investigator Research Grant (2018-2022) investigating the role of interoception in the recognition of others' non-emotional internal bodily states in autism and eating disorders.
Dr Federica Biotti
Postdoctoral researcher
After completing her PhD in Psychology at City, University of London, Dr Biotti is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research background includes studies on the cognitive mechanisms of developmental prosopagnosia and facial emotion recognition in autism. She is now involved in a project investigating the recognition of non-emotional bodily states in self and others, both in clinical and non-clinical populations.
Lara Carr
Phd student
Lara completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is now in the first year of her PhD. Her project investigates the recognition of non-emotional internal states in oneself and others. In particular, Lara is interested in how interoceptive abilities develop through childhood and adolescence in both clinical and non-clinical populations.
Melissa Barker
PHD student
Melissa received her undergraduate degree in Neuropsychology from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) in 2016. She also completed a Masters by Research at UCLan for a thesis exploring the role of interoceptive abilities in emotional intensity and susceptibility to distraction by sound. Her research investigates the contribution of interoception in mental health and the development of psychiatric conditions, with a focus on Eating Disorders.
Dr Jennifer Murphy
collaborator and principal investigator
Dr Murphy is a Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research focuses on the measurement, developmental trajectory and correlates of interoceptive abilities. Dr Murphy is particularly interested in sex differences in interoceptive abilities, including how these emerge across development and whether they relate to sex differences in mental and physical health.
Assistants
Sarah Ahmad
Research Assistant - present
Racquel Quinn
Research Assistant - present
