LATEST: Doctoral Alumna Receives Branco Weiss Award
ARCHIVE: 2010 -- 2009 -- 2008

Dr Aoife O'Donovan has become the first Irish researcher to receive a prestigious Branco Weiss Fellowship, an international award offered to outstanding young researchers from across the world. Aoife recently completed a PhD on stress, inflammation, and cellular aging under the joint supervision of CROLS Director Dr Brian Hughes and Professor Kevin Malone of UCD, while in receipt of a Craig Dobbin Newman Scholarship in Mental Health Research from University College Dublin.  Previously, she completed Master's research on stress, social support, and cardiovascular reactivity at NUI Galway, again under the supervision of Dr Brian Hughes.

Aoife is one of just three Branco Weiss Fellows selected this year, and will now be supported to pursue her research programme for up to five years at various locations internationally.  She will be working to elucidate mechanisms of psychological stress effects on biological aging. Her latest programme of research combines psychobiological research methodology with rigorous measurement techniques from cognitive psychology towards the overall goal of uncovering mechanisms by which psychological stress could accelerate biological aging. Through uncovering novel interactions between psychological and biological systems, this work represents an effort to overcome dualistic assumptions in our understanding of health and disease. Such interdisciplinary work may lead to breakthroughs in disease prevention and treatment.

Aoife is currently based at the University of California, San Francisco, where she conducted part of her PhD data collection with support from Fulbright and Rotary International Scholarships.  

See also: "Measuring the Effects of Stress on the Ageing Process", Irish Times, 18/11/2010
See also: 2010 Branco Weiss Fellows

18/11/2010

CROLS doctoral candidates Lorraine McDonagh, Ann-Marie Creaven, and Sinéad Conneely each recently received prestigious awards in recognition of their research achievements. These recognitions were at university, national, and international levels, and for a variety of research topics and approaches.

Lorraine McDonagh received an invitation to attend the prestigious International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Psychology Summer Institute, which took place in the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in August. The LGBT Summer Institute is a week-long residential program with places limited to 25 high-achieving postgraduate researchers from across the world.  It is supported by the John D. Evans Foundation, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the American Psychological Association, inter alia.  The Institute comprised a programme of workshops, seminars, colloquia, and round-table discussions run by the leading scholars in the field of LGBT Psychology. As well as receiving an invitation, Lorraine was awarded a financial scholarship by the Institute organisers to support her attendance.

Lorraine is conducting research on men’s sexual health and masculinity in an Irish context, under the supervision of Dr Todd Morrison (Adjunct Supervisor) and Dr Ian Stewart. She has a number of publications to date, including in the Journal of Men’s Studies, and recently developed a psychometric scale for measuring male body image self-consciousness, which was published in the 3rd edition of the Handbook of Sexuality Measures (Routledge, 2010). Lorraine also received a travel bursary from the College of Arts, Social Sciences & Celtic Studies at NUI Galway. Her research is part of the Irish Social Sciences Platform, funded by the Higher Education Authority as part of the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions.

Ann-Marie Creaven was awarded a Government of Ireland Scholarship by the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences. These scholarships are awarded to fund research undertaken by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the humanities and social sciences over the next three years, and are among the most prestigious such awards available in Ireland. Ann-Marie was one of just 13 doctoral candidates at NUI Galway to receive an award, from a total of 92 awards made nationally. This year was one of the most competitive to date, with an increase of 50% in the number of applications made to the IRCHSS for funding. 

Ann-Marie is conducting research on social support relationships among acquaintances and romantic partners, with a particular focus on their impact on psychophysiological indices of stress tolerance.  The research is supervised by Dr Brian Hughes.  She is also involved in collaborative research on mother-child dyadic interaction with colleagues at the Family Systems Lab at Penn State University, Pennsylvania. 

Sinéad Conneely has received a University Write-Up Bursary from NUI Galway, to support the completion of her PhD thesis. This year, the Dean of Graduate Studies instituted this Bursary scheme across the University as a whole following its successful piloting within the College of Arts in 2009. Bursaries were awarded following a highly competitive selection process, involving critical assessments of applicants’ research to date and their plans for the future. Sinéad’s research, which is supervised by Dr Brian Hughes, focuses on the role of anxiety and neuroticism in influencing placebo-type responses to purported stress-reduction interventions, especially as are evidenced by physiological measures.

See also:  Lorraine McDonagh's personal webpage
See also:  Ann-Marie Creaven's personal webpage
See also:  Sinéad Conneely 's personal webpage
See also:  "Fifteen Research Funding Awards for NUI Galway", NUI Galway Press Office, 1/6/2010

31/8/2010

'STAR 2010', the 31st World Conference on Stress and Anxiety Research, took place in NUI Galway from 4 to 6 August 2010.  Attended by over 250 delegates from 31 different countries and taking place over three days, the conference incorporated a sequence of cutting-edge keynote addresses from leading figures in stress and anxiety research.  Photographs and further information can be viewed at: http://star2010.wordpress.com.

See also: "Stress and Anxiety Topic of Discussion at NUI Galway", NUI Galway Press Office, 3/8/2010
See also: "NUI Galway conference to focus on stress", Galway Independent, 4/8/2010
See also: "Major conference on stress and anxiety in Galway", Morning Ireland, RTÉ Radio One, 5/8/2010
See also: "Galway conference to examine the impact of extreme stress and anxiety", Galway City Tribune, 6/8/2010

9/8/2010

Major Study on Sleep and Health Begins CROLS researchers are looking for adults in full-time employment and those aged 65 years or over to take part in their Sleep, Health and Wellness project. The researchers are recruiting individuals in order to examine the influence of work-life balance, social networks and sleep duration on blood pressure and physical health. "Up to 35 per cent of the population complain about sleep problems. Sleep loss can impact on job performance in the short-term, as well as leading to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease in the long-term. This project offers individuals an opportunity to see how their blood pressure fluctuates during the course of the normal day. The findings of this project should help to inform the development of improved health promotion strategies and clinical management for cardiovascular diseases," said senior researcher Dr Siobhán Howard. Participants will be required wear a small blood pressure monitor for 24 hours as they go about their daily activities. In addition, one visit to NUI Galway will be required in order to collect the monitor and learn more about the project. Expenses incurred will be reimbursed to participants and each individual will be provided with a free blood pressure report (with an approximate value of €100) arising from their participation in the project. For details on how to participate in the study, contact project manager Dr Siobhán Howard at 091-494069 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              091-494069      end_of_the_skype_highlighting (siobhan.howardnuigalway.ie) or visit www.sleephealthandwellness.wordpress.com. See also: "Zzz what you can do", Galway Independent, 28/4/2010 28/4/2010

CROLS researchers, Eimear Lee and Lorraine McDonagh (above), received awards at the national conference of the Irish Social Sciences Platform for research presented during the two-day event. Eimear received the award for the best paper by a doctoral student, while Lorraine received the award for the best paper by any researcher on the theme of 'sustaining communities'.

The awards were adjudicated by a panel of social scientists from across the island of Ireland, and were based on submissions received for the ISSP conference.  In all over 45 papers were submitted, relating to three ISSP themes: 'sustaining communities', 'knowledge society', and 'balanced development'.  The papers were presented orally as part of the ISSP Annual Conference held at NUI Galway in December 2009.

Eimear's paper was entitled Research and Policy on Psychological Caregivers: Bridging the Divide, while Lorraine's paper dealt with Policy and Sexual Minority Men's Health.  Both Eimear and Lorraine are completing PhD research at CROLS, supported by scholarships awarded within the ISSP under the framework of the government's Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions, Fourth Cycle.

20/12/2009

Leading international psychologist, Diane Halpern, is to deliver the opening Keynote Lecture at the forthcoming ISSP Annual Conference, co-hosted by CROLS (1-2 December).  A past-president of the American Psychological Association, Halpern is the Trustee Professor of Psychology and the founding Director of the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children at Claremont McKenna College in California.  She is a renowned expert on work-family interaction issues, and on critical thinking. She has testified before the United States Congress on several occasions, advising on such issues as workplace flexibility and health, women in science, and the psychology of learning and teaching.  Her Keynote Lecture is entitled "A Cabinet-Level Office of Social Science Advisors: Mr Cowen and President Obama, Are You Listening?", in which she will explore the practical, political, and scholarly dimensions of applying social science research to public policy formation. Further information on the ISSP Annual Conference can be found here.

Biography

Diane F. Halpern is a past-president of the American Psychological Association, one of the largest professional associations in the world with over 150,000 members and affiliations in 80 countries. She is the Trustee Professor of Psychology and the founding Director of the Berger Institute for Work, Family, and Children at Claremont McKenna College.  Diane has published many books including, Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking (4th Ed.); Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities (4th ed.), a special two-volume edited issue of the American Behavioral Scientist entitled Changes at the Intersection of Work and Family (edited with Heidi R. Riggio, 2006), From Work-Family Balance to Work-Family Interaction: Changing the Metaphor (edited with Susan Murphy, 2005), and Women at the Top: Powerful Leaders Tell Us how to Combine Work and Family (co-authored by Fanny Cheung, 2008). Her most recent books are Undergraduate Education in Psychology: A Blueprint for the Future of the Disciplines (edited, 2009) and the introduction to psychology textbook, Psychological Science, 3rd edition (2010 with Michael Gazzaniga and Todd Heatherton). 

Diane was president of the Western Psychological Association, the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, and the Division of General Psychology of the American Psychological Association. She has won many awards for her teaching and research, including the 2002 Outstanding Professor Award from the Western Psychological Association, the 1999 American Psychological Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Outstanding Alumna Award from the University of Cincinnati. Most recently, Diane is a Principal Investigator on a Department of Education Grant (with Keith Millis at Northern Illinois University and Art Graesser at University of Memphis). She is working on a project that uses principles from the science of learning and serious games that will teach critical thinking/scientific reasoning skills in a game environment.

22/10/2009

Diarmuid Verrier, doctoral candidate at CROLS, has been awarded a Completion Bursary by the College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Celtic Studies at NUI Galway.  This prestigious award was made following a highly competitive selection process, involving a critical assessment of Diarmuid's research to date and his plans for the future. 

This is the first year in which Completion Bursaries have been awarded by the College.  The scheme was established in order to acknowledge the intense workload involved in pursuing a PhD by research, particularly in the period immediately prior to submitting the thesis. 

Diarmuid's research is concerned with the interrelationships among personality types, cognition, and physiological reactivity to cognitive stressors.  The work involved a large-scale psychometric survey followed by a series of laboratory trials, in which participants underwent standardised stress under controlled conditions.  The findings help shed new light on the question of whether qualities such as creativity, organised thought, and concentration are helpful to people when coping with challenging demands.

25/06/2009

A collaborative study involving researchers at CROLS and at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland has explored the features of personality characteristics that are believed to be linked with stress-related heart disease.  In a unique study led by Dr Frank Doyle (RCSI), patients with coronary heart disease were compared with healthy adults in order to assess whether the features of the so-called Type D personality appear in both populations in the same way. 

A number of previous international studies have established convincing evidence that the Type D personality--a combination of negative affectivity and social inhibition--represents a significant risk for adverse cardiovascular disease outcomes.  While researchers at RCSI gathered Type D data from cardiac patients, researchers at CROLS--Dr Siobhán Howard and Dr Brian Hughes--collected matching data from a healthy adult sample.  Comparing the datasets revealed that Type D characteristics differ in important ways between cardiac and healthy samples. 

The findings are to be presented at Psychology, Health, & Medicine 2009, a major national conference to be held at Trinity College Dublin on 18 June 2009.  Other investigators involved in the research were R. Conroy, Hannah McGee, and Mary Delaney, all of whom are at RCSI.

11/06/2009

Two CROLS Doctoral Scholars, Eimear Lee and Eanna O'Leary, have both been awarded places on a prestigious workshop on psychoneuroimmunology, to be held at the University of Birmingham, UK, on 23 April 2009.  The conference-- New Developments in Psychoneuroimmunology: Populations, Paradigms, and Pathways--is aimed at researchers and academics working in disciplines including psychology, biosciences, and psychiatry, who have an interest in how psychological stress impacts adversely on disease causing mechanisms in the human body.  The workshop is organised by the Behavioural Medicine Group within the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at the University of Birmingham, one of the top research laboratories in this area in the world.

Contributors to the workshop include Dr Mark Hamer (University College London), Dr Valeria Mondelli (King's College London), and Professor Leslie Walker (University of Hull). 

Eimear Lee and Eanna O'Leary are completing PhD research at CROLS, investigating aspects of psychosocial stress that impact on well-being.  Both are in receipt of four-year CROLS PhD Scholarships awarded via the Irish Social Sciences Platform, under the Fourth Cycle of the Irish Government's Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions.

10/04/2009

CROLS Director, Dr Brian Hughes, was interviewed for a Financial Times investigation of how perceptions of health risks can themselves precipitate ill-health through stress-related processes.  This concept, termed the 'nocebo' effect by some commentators, may help account for medically unexplained symptomatic reactions to novel installations in the environment (such as overhead power cables, mobile phone masts, or wind farms).  As well as Dr Hughes, other international experts quoted in the piece included James Rubin of King's College London, John Adams of University College London, and Arthur Barsky of Harvard Medical School.  The article was prepared by journalist Stuart Blackman (see here for online version).

25/4/2009

CROLS-based Postdoctoral Fellow, Siobhán Howard, has been awarded a place on the prestigious Dresden International Spring School, at the University of Dresden, Germany.  Hosted by the world-renowned research laboratory of Professor Clemens Kirschbaum, the Spring School theme is The ABC of Stress: Biopsychological Assessment, Basics, and Consequences.

As the effects of stress seem to play a role in a broad range of psychological processes, even to the point of mental or physical disease, a profound knowledge in this area is important for basic scientists and clinicians. The Dresden Spring School brings together an internationally renowned group of expert speakers as well as a cohort of highly-rated doctoral and early-career researchers from across Europe and beyond.  Competition for entry was intense, with just 30 young researchers awarded places on the basis of an international competitive evaluation of research submissions. 

Siobhán Howard's doctoral research, completed at CROLS, concerned the impact of the Type D personality on cardiovascular reactivity to psychological stress.  She is currently working as a Postdoctoral Fellow on a large-scale HRB-funded study of hostility, psychosocial variables, and cardiovascular and immune health, led by Professor Jack James.

10/02/2009

The honour of hosting 31st World Conference on Stress and Anxiety Research, the annual conference of the Stress and Anxiety Research Society (STAR), has been awarded to CROLS .  The conference will take place at NUI Galway in August 2010. 

STAR is a multidisciplinary international organization of researchers who share interests in theoretical, experimental, and applied aspects of anxiety, stress, and coping.  The Society publishes the international journal, Anxiety, Stress & Coping. The first STAR conference was held in Leiden, Netherlands, in 1980.  In the past 30 years, the conference has visited some of the world’s most beautiful cities and countries, as well as some of its most prestigious universities.  Recent conferences have been held in Budapest, London, Bavaro-Punta Cana, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Rethymnon, Istanbul, Krakow, Bratislava, and Cairo.  These meetings provide a platform for major addresses by internationally renowned scholars, paper sessions, poster sessions, and workshops. 

The World Conference on Stress and Anxiety Research is one of the most established world conferences focusing on research into stress, anxiety, and related phenomena.  While having traversed the globe--being held in Europe, Australia, Africa, and North America--STAR 2010 at CROLS in Galway marks the first visit of this prestigious conference to Ireland.

19/07/2008