Psychology faculty receive SSHRC Insight Development Grants

Dr. Laurin, a professor in UBC's department of psychology, investigates how people’s goals and motivations interact with their beliefs and ideologies – about politics, about religion, or about the nature of the world. For example, she asks questions like what motivates people to support the principle of democracy, even when doing so goes against their own interests. Or what do we do when we’ve done something that we know is wrong? Why is it that the social standing you’re born with is most likely the social standing you’ll die with? And how do people go about convincing themselves that the world they live in is fair?

Dr. Todd is an associate professor in UBC's department of psychology, a CIHR New Investigator, and Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Fellow. She received a PhD in Developmental Science and Neuroscience from University of Toronto, and post-doctoral training in cognitive neuroscience at the Rotman Research Institute and University of Toronto. Her research program focuses on neurocognitive processes underlying the interaction between human emotion and cognition in health and in pathology. Before beginning her PhD, Dr. Todd was a contemporary dance choreographer and journalist. As both a choreographer and a cognitive neuroscientist, she has been interested in how emotion influences attention, learning and memory.

Insight Grants support research excellence in the social sciences and humanities. Funding is available to emerging and established scholars for research initiatives of two to five years. Stable support for long-term research initiatives is central to advancing knowledge.