Lums and posters

As part of University-wide centenary celebrations, our school recently held an open day to catch up with our psych alumni (or ‘lums’, as termed by our head of school).

Head of School, Prof. Bill von Hippel welcomes our 'lums'.

The day started with a few short presentations about cutting edge research in the school. Prof. Kim Halford showed us evidence for the efficacy of his couples-based intervention, used to help deal with stressful events. Next, Prof. Jason Mattingley spoke about the emergence of cognitive neuroscience as a discipline and how neuropsychological conditions, such as synaesthesia, can inform us about how the brain works. Prof. Virginia Slaughter told us about her work on theory of mind and how it helps us understand autism. Finally Prof. Jolanda Jetten told us that having multiple social identities, as opposed to one, increases our quality of life in many ways.

Each of the profs giving their presentation.

There was also a poster session where a bunch of students, including Will, Matt, Wen, and I, got to show off our research to the lums (James could have presented his EPC poster but he lost it somewhere). Since I hadn't made a poster before, I saw this as a golden opportunity to get in some poster practice prior to the conference in October.

A bunch of ladies engrossed by my poster.

Here you can see Will digressing from his poster and educating the crowd with an impromptu lesson in eye-poking.



Will demonstrating the ‘two-pronged’ approach on a volunteer audience member.

Afterwards we had a small ceremony to congratulate our lums on their successes since leaving the school. Each had an opportunity to speak about their experiences here at UQ and it was great to hear what the school was like before I was born (did you know that McElwain was a real person and it’s pronounced MAC-Elwain?!) The lums spoke about how some things have changed (everyone used to be clinical, now there’s an even spread across all disciplines) and how some things are still the same (the tearoom still hosts lively lunchtime discussion).

Anyway, it was great to meet some of our lums, especially when we blew their minds with our research!

Thanks to Matt for most of the pictures :)

- Morgan

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