Dr Bert Timmermans

Biography

• 2019– Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor), University of Aberdeen
• 2013–2019 Lecturer (Assistant Professor), University of Aberdeen
• 2010–2012 Marie Curie / Volkswagen Foundation Fellow, Neuroimaging Group, UHCologne
• 2007–2009 Research Fellow, Consciousness, Cognition & Computation Group, ULBruxelles
• 2006 PhD in Psychology (Social Cognition), Vrije Universiteit Brussel
• 2000–2006 Research & Teaching Assistant, Social Psychology Lab, VUBrussel
  
• 1999 Master in Cognitive Science, Université Libre de Bruxelles
• 1998 MSc in Psychology (Clinical/Experimental), Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Research Overview

• Social cognition: social interaction, social sense of agency, action contingencies & interaction dynamics, gaze & eye tracking, social reward. Consciousness: perceptual awareness and metacognition, implicit learning, subliminal perception.

Current Research

Topics & Projects

Here's some of what's currently going on or will be in the near future. Undergraduates, prospective PhD students or postdocs, please enquire — people with skills in Python, Vizard, MatLab, eye tracking, or Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA) are especially welcome:

• Social cognition in interaction versus observation
• Relationship between Ascriptions of self- and other-agency in social interaction
• Social versus monetary reward in social cognition & motor learning
• Real-time gaze-based social interaction, analysis of interaction dynamics
• Subjective measures of consciousness and metacognition

Funding and Grants

Principal Investigator

• 2025 EPS Small Grant — "Sense of agency in social interaction through reciprocal action timing" £10,000
• 2019—2023 Carnegie Trust Research Incentive Grant (RIG008270) — "Experiencing myself through you: Self-agency in social interaction" £10,000
• 2015—2019 Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (EU FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG) — "DUALGAZE: Social cognition in gaze-based interaction" €100,000
• 2010—2013 Volkswagen Foundation grant — “Being addressed as you: Conceptual and empirical investigations of a Second-Person approach to other minds” — co-PI with L. Schilbach (University Hospital of Cologne), T. Schlicht (Ruhr-University of Bochum), N. Steinbeis (MPI Leipzig) €317,000
• 2009—2011 Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (EU FP7-PEOPLE-IEF-2008) — "SOCIAL BRAIN: How does our brain learn to be social?" €169,000

Other

• 2019—2023 Participant to, and UK Management Committee Substitute for COST Action (CA18106) “The neural architecture of consciousness” (PI Kristian Sandberg, Aarhus University)
• 2015—2018 Research partner to PI Michal Wierzchon, Jagiellonian University of Krakow, on a HARMONIA grant from the Polish National Science Centre — "Cognitive and neuronal mechanisms of metacognitive awareness"

Teaching Responsibilities

Undergraduate

• Level 1-3 — Psychology Methodology curriculum coordinator
• Level 3 — PS3015 Methodology A [course coordinator; GLM/SPSS]
• Level 3 — PS3522 Methodology B [course coordinator; GLM/SPSS; research project supervisor]
• Level 3-4 — SX3504 Consciousness [course coordinator; Behavioural Measures]
• Level 4 — PS4019 / PS4038 Psychology Thesis [supervision]

Postgraduate

• MRes — PS5302 / PS5801 Basic & Advanced Research Methods for Postgraduates [R: ANOVA/Factor Analysis/Logistic regression] 
• MRes — PS5017 Research Project for Postgraduate Students in Psychology [supervision]
• MSc Psychological Studies — PS5903 Research Project [supervision]