Postgraduate - Area of study Psychological studies

As a discipline, psychological studies has a teaching and research interest in all fields of psychology and a myriad iterations with other disciplines. Students and staff within psychological studies are involved in both laboratory- and field-based research, and are supported by grant and industry sources of funding. Two current broad areas of interest are virtual reality (VR), and road safety.

Projects associated with our virtual reality laboratory include the development and testing of VR interfaces, particularly using the sense of touch; simulations, training and remote control for mining and medical applications, and the interaction between the different sensory modalities in virtual reality. Current road safety topics have a particular focus in the areas of heavy vehicle safety, motorcyclists, and ecodriving. While these are current topics, supervision is also potentially available in a wide range of other areas such as the psychophysics of touch, sensory integration, parapsychology, sports psychology, motivation, health psychology, teaching and learning technologies, human factors, human-machine interface, and behaviour change. Psychological studies academics also have a history of collaboration with academics in other disciplines (both within and outside Monash, including internationally) in order to accommodate projects that cross boundaries.

Psychological studies boasts strong cross-fertilisation across projects as all staff and student researchers (honours and postgraduate) participate in regular informal round-table discussions of all ongoing projects. Research students at all levels are also strongly encouraged and supported to publish, including attendance at appropriate conferences.