Emma Portch

Dr Emma Portch

  • Senior Lecturer in Psychology
  • Poole House P127, Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow, Poole, BH12 5BB
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Biography

Following my undegraduate degree in Psychology (Royal Holloway) I completed a MSc in Forensic Psychology at the University of Portsmouth. I then moved to Leeds, where I completed a one-year research post, assessing the relationship between cognitive interviewing techniques, verbal overshadowing, and computerised facial composite construction (supervised by Dr Charity Brown and Professor Charlie Frowd). I stayed in Leeds to complete my PhD. My thesis explored the influence of (language-anchored) conceptual knowledge on the interpretation of facial expressions of emotion (supervised by Dr Charity Brown, Dr Jelena Havelka and Dr Russell Hutter). In 2016 I then joined the University of Manchester as a member of research staff and worked on a two-year project to assess whether the novel application of motion parameters improve the recognisability of facial composites (supervised by Dr Karen Lander, Professor Timothy Cootes, and Professor Charlie Frowd). I started my lectureship at Bournemouth University in January 2018.

Research

I have two broad research interests. First, how (language-anchored) conceptual knowledge can directly or indirectly influence the visual perception of categorisable stimuli (emotional faces and objects). Second, how psychological factors can impact upon the construction and subsequent recognition of computerised facial composites (frequently produced during police investigations). I am currently involved in projects that investigate the impact of cognitive interviewing mnemonics, facial visualisation techniques, facial animation, and individual target-face characteristics (attractiveness and disguise).