I joined the University of Limerick in September 2009 after working for two and a half years as a post doctoral research and teaching fellow at the Centre for Research on Self and Identity (University of Southampton, UK). I received a doctorate in Social Psychology from Northern Illinois University in 2006 (DeKalb, IL, USA); an MA in Clinical Psychology from Roosevelt University Chicago in1999; and a BSc in Psychology with an academic minor in Philosophy from Loyola University Chicago in 1997. From 1998 to 2001, I worked at SPSS, Inc. in Chicago as a quality assurance software analyst.

Broadly, I study mental health and well-being through the lens of social cognition. I study the interactions between the self, emotions, and autobiographical memory-long-term memory for the contexts, individuals, and personal feelings associated with life events. An example is research on the fading affect bias: the tendency for unpleasant feelings associated with past negative events to fade faster over time than the pleasant feelings associated with past positive events. A related interest is research on mnemic neglect: the tendency for people to ignore self-threatening information about the self and fail to ignore such information about someone else. Another theme is research on nostalgia: bittersweet feelings that are usually prompted by thinking about the past.