I am honoured to have been awarded the John Shepherd Prize for best MRes Psychology thesis in 2024-25, titled “Improving the Diagnostic Value of Person Descriptions”. This recognition means a great deal to me, as it marks the culmination of a challenging but rewarding year of study.
This award feels especially meaningful as Professor John Shepherd was a pioneer of face recognition research here at Aberdeen, particularly in the context of eyewitness memory and person perception. He, along with colleagues Donald Christie and Haydn Ellis, played a central role in developing many of the paradigms that continue to shape the field, including those I used in my own project. As my research examines eyewitness memory through person descriptions and its role in face recognition, I feel privileged to be, in a small way, following in his footsteps.
I am grateful to my supervisors, Dr Travis Seale-Carlisle and Dr Agnieszka Konopka, for their guidance and support, which has shaped both this work and my development as a researcher. I also thank Professor Chad Dodson, Emily Ives and colleagues at the University of Virginia for their collaboration, as well as the Scottish Graduate School of Social Sciences (SGSSS) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for financial support.
I would like to thank the School of Psychology at Aberdeen for their support which helped me obtain competitive travel awards to present my research at international conferences in Ireland and Colorado. These exciting opportunities were invaluable, enabling me to share my work with a wider academic community and begin building relationships with leading academics in the Netherlands and the United States.
I would especially like to acknowledge my joint winner of this prize, Pepita Alex, for their encouragement and friendship. Winning this award has given me a confidence boost as I begin my PhD, where I will build on my MRes research to investigate how eyewitness descriptions can be made more diagnostic and useful in real-world contexts.
Abbie is studying her PhD at the School of Psychology.
