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Prof Lauren Stewart

Professor in Psychology

Lauren's undergraduate degree was in Physiological Sciences at Balliol College Oxford, where she also studied for an MSc in Neuroscience. She completed her PhD at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, followed by postdoctoral positions at Newcastle University and a travelling fellowship to Harvard Medical School. 


She is currently a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London where she founded the MSc programme in the Music, Mind and Brain lab.


Her research has focused on topics including congenital amusia, musical training as a model of plasticity, and spontaneous musical imagery. This work has been funded by grants from the Economic and Social Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust. She is associate editor of  the APA journal, Psychomusicology. To see a list of her publications, click here.

l.stewart@gold.ac.uk

Dr Diana Omigie

Reader in Psychology

Diana's current research aims to refine our understanding of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying music-induced emotion and pleasure. She uses a combination of methods to examine the extent to which salient changes in musical structure induces pleasurable arousal and information-seeking behaviour. She is also interested in the physiological and neural correlates of more complex emotional states driven by engagement with music as an art form. In the past, she has explored, amongst others, the music listening disorder known as congenital amusia as well as the role of expertise on musical engagement and cognitive outcome following brain damage.

diana.omigie@gold.ac.uk

Dr Daniel Müllensiefen

Reader in Psychology

Daniel studied Systematic Musicology, Historic Musicology and Journalism at the University of Hamburg (Germany) and the University of Salamanca (Spain). He did his doctoral dissertation in Systematic Musicology on memory for melodies under the supervision of Albrecht Schneider at the University of Hamburg and obtained his PhD in 2005.

From April 2006 until June 2009 he worked as a Research Fellow in the Computing department at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Since July 2009 he has been a lecturer, and he became senior lecturer, in the Psychology department at Goldsmiths and co-director of the MSc programme in the Music, Mind and Brain lab at Goldsmiths. Since September 2010 he is also working as Scientist in Residence with the London-based advertising agency DDB UK.​  To see a list of his journal articles, click here.

d.mullensiefen@gold.ac.uk

Dr Maria Herrojo Ruiz

Lecturer in Psychology

Maria studied Theoretical Physics (M.Sc., M.Phil.) at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Spain). She did her doctoral dissertation in Neuroscience as a Marie Curie Fellow focusing on the neural correlates of error-monitoring during music performance. Her doctoral dissertation was supervised by Professor Eckart Altenmüller at the Institute of Music Physiology and Musicians’ Medicine in Hanover (Germany). She obtained her PhD in 2009. She then joined the Motor Neuroscience group of the Charite Medical University of Berlin (Germany). As Principal Investigator in two successive research grants, Maria has been conducting research on the role of the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuits in mediating learning and monitoring of sensorimotor sequences, both in healthy human subjects and in patients with movement disorders. Since September 2015 she is a Lecturer in Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London.

M.Herrojo-Ruiz@gold.ac.uk

Prof Pamela Heaton

Professor of Psychology

Pamela's primary research interest is in developmental disorders, especially autism.  Since completing her PhD on musical cognition in autism in 1999, she has been a principal researcher or research group leader on EU and ESRC grant applications investigating remediation of sensory abnormalities, pitch and colour discrimination and memory, and colour categorisation in autism.

Before studying psychology she trained as a classical singer and retains a strong interest in the cognitive neuropsychology of music. In particular she is interested in how musical information processing distinguishes atypical and typically developing children and adolescents.  Her current interests mainly focus on investigating the relationship between speech and music perception in autism, SLI, Down syndrome and typical development.

p.heaton@gold.ac.uk

Prof Joydeep Bhattacharya

Professor of Psychology

Joydeep's research is centred around applying electrophysiological techniques to understand neural basis of higher complex cognition from music perception, artistry, problem-solving to creativity. Further, he is also interested in various basic (crossmodal processing, emotions, sequence processing, individual differences) and applied (decision making, various cognitive biases, preference formation) psychological concepts by using music as a stimulus. Finally, he also investigates if and how creative thinking can be enhanced.

j.bhattacharya@gold.ac.uk

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