Profile

I live in Northern Ireland with my wife and our cat called Mo. I am a lecturer in sport and exercise psychology at Ulster University. I am also a keen runner, and have completed a lot of marathons and ultra-marathons (races longer than 26 miles!). Mostly I run for enjoyment and to help me cope a little better with the stresses of normal daily life.

When not running or working (which is not very often!) I love to read, mostly autobiographies about sports people, or books about sport science and sport psychology. I’m also a pretty good cook!

My work involves lecturing Undergraduate and Masters Psychology students on sport and exercise psychology. I also conduct research on endurance exercise performance. Typically, this involves asking runners what they think about and what they focus their attention on when running. We then try to learn what is important to help them perform better or to help make running feel easier. The best part of my job is meeting lots of interesting people. Actually, many days it feels more like a hobby than a job.

I typically have a lecture twice or three days a week. Meetings are most days, and these can range from meetings about issues for students, meetings with students about their coursework or a project they are working on. Meetings with other staff are pretty boring, but important too! Finally, my research work is the most exciting thing about my job. I work with runners, and it is great to meet so many interesting people and get to do exciting research work with them