Dr Alexis Makin PhD

Senior Lecturer Psychology

About

Personal Statement

My research is in visual neuroscience. The visual system groups elements into meaningful gestalts. This is called perceptual organization. But when does perceptual organization happen? Does it happen automatically, whatever the participant’s task? Or does it happen selectively, and only when it is task-relevant? I often use EEG to answer these questions, with a particular focus on visual symmetry.

I am also interested open science and fighting the replication crisis in psychology. I have curated all our EEG data into a large public database called ‘The complete Liverpool SPN catalogue’ (https://osf.io/2sncj/). We can use the SPN catalogue to discover new things about the visual system that could never be revealed by a single experiment.

My largest contribution to teaching is my Great debates in psychology module. Here I focus on topics where there is no academic consensus, such as consciousness and free will.

Funded Fellowships

  • Leverhume Trust Early Career Fellowship (Leverhulme Trust, 2012 - 2015)