Dr Lydia Kearney

Lydia is a Lecturer, Deputy School Director of Education (Library and Quality Assurance) and Applied Degree Assistant Co-ordinator at the School of Psychology.

Lydia's main areas of interest are social anxiety and the experience of mental imagery. Particularly, the ways in which anxious self-imagery reflects cognitive biases in attention and interpretation. Her research has also included the links between imagery and rumination, and between imagery and emotion. She is also interested in investigating cognitive and behavioural precursors of depression and anxiety.

Lydia has utilised mixed qualitative and quantitative methods, and is keen to expand in the application of these methods to understand dyadic and small-group interaction processes. As a part of this, she is interested in ways of evaluating qualitative research, and integrating this with experimental data to provide a detailed overall picture of a person's experience.

Social anxiety; clinical psychology; mental imagery; attentional focus and bias; mixed methods.

Grants and Awards