We have particular strengths in pain, affect, emotion, consciousness, perception and perceptual experience, illusion and hallucination, virtual and augmented reality, imagination, colour, perceptual constancy, modularity and cognitive penetration, the epistemology of perception, mental representation, and cognitive science. We host the Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience.

Core Staff

  • David Bain – pain, pain, affect, suffering, emotion, consciousness, bodily awareness, perceptual experience. Change link to 
  • Derek Brown – colour (epistemology and metaphysics of colour); direct and indirect perception; perceptual constancy; imagination; perceptual projection; illusion
  • Jennifer Corns – cognitive science, pain, affect, consciousness, emotion, suffering
  • Jack Lyons – modularity, mental representation, perceptual experience, consciousness, cognitive penetration of perception, cognition/perception distinction
  • Fiona Macpherson – perception, consciousness, perceptual experience, illusion, hallucination, virtual reality and sensory substitution, imagination, cognitive penetration, and the metaphysics of mind, the nature and individuation of the senses, cross-modal phenomena, colour, synaesthesia.

Affiliated Staff

For more information on research in this area, see the staff pages linked above, as well as the Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience.


First published: 2 August 2021