I am a Lecturer in the Religion Programme at the University of Otago. My research is interdisciplinary, spanning sociopolitical psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and the scientific study of religion. I examine how identity, ideology, and belief systems shape prejudice, intergroup relations, and social attitudes, linking individual-level processes with population-level social dynamics.

I am a member of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (NZAVS), one of New Zealand’s largest longitudinal social surveys. Within this national research infrastructure, I lead the Muslim Diversity Study, a longitudinal programme designed to address the underrepresentation of Muslim communities in population-level data. This work enables large-scale modelling of identity, discrimination, wellbeing, and social attitudes, contributing to both theoretical development and policy-relevant analysis in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Research

My research focuses on prejudice, intergroup relations, and sociopolitical attitudes, including, but not limited to, religious contexts. I draw on multiple methodological approaches, including:

This work reflects a broader interest in human flourishing within complex social and cultural environments.

My background spans cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and interdisciplinary social research. My doctoral work focused on memory suppression and event-related potentials (ERPs), including applications in forensic neuroscience. My postdoctoral research expanded into contemplative neuroscience and large-scale social data analysis.

Teaching

My teaching focuses on connecting theory, empirical methods, and real-world applications across psychology and the scientific study of religion..

Current courses include:

I also have taught research methods and statistics, cognitive psychology and contemplative neuroscience. My approach emphasises conceptual clarity, methodological rigour, and critical engagement with data.

I supervise research across cognitive, social, and interdisciplinary domains, including projects in sociopolitical psychology, neuroscience, and religion. I have experience supervising PhD, Master’s, and Honours students and welcome enquiries aligned with my research areas.

I work primarily in R (RStudio, Quarto) with GitHub-based reproducible workflows, alongside MATLAB and Python for specialised analyses.