School of Psychology
University of Hertfordshire
College Lane
Hertfordshire
AL10 9AB

Tel : 01707 285282
Fax : 01707 285073

Email :

s.n.woods@herts.ac.uk

Telephone:

01707 285057

Location:

1H269, CP Snow

Subject Area :

Social Psychology

Personal Statement

My current position as a lecturer involves teaching personality and social psychology. I recently completed my PhD that investigated individual differences associated with bullying and victimisation behaviour. Prior to this, I worked as a Research Fellow on a European project exploring the use of robots as human companions in daily life. Before this I worked at the Institute of Psychiatry, London (2000-2002) on an evaluation study involving psychiatric inpatient units, and at the University of Hertfordshire (1998-2000) on a large scale study concerning bullying behaviour.

Research

Member of Research Group: Development and Language

My research interests include, bullying and aggressive behaviour among children and adolescents, intervention initiatives and preventative programmes for bullying behaviour, the role of friendships and social networks in clinical samples, and the role of empathy and emotions in social behaviour. I am currently involved in a European project called E-Circus (http://www.e-circus.org/), which is investigating ways to develop innovative anti-bullying initiatives. The project is interested in whether Virtual Learning Environments and computer software can be used as an engaging and interesting bullying intervention with children. This involves exploring the use of role-play and empathic engagement with virtual characters in an online drama. Human-Robot Interaction is a further area of research that I am interested in, and I have recently been involved in several studies to investigate human acceptance and engagement with robots in a home scenario.

Teaching

I currently teach personality and social psychology to first and second year undergraduates, and am involved in teaching practical lab sessions. I also contribute to the new third year module called ‘The Psychology of Performance’. I teach on a new post-gradulate bridging course for students wishing to undertake a conversion masters.

Publications

Wolke, D., Woods, S., & Samara, M., (in press). Who escapes or remains a victim of bullying in primary school?.British Journal of Developmental Psychology.

Woods, S., Done, J., & Kalsi, H. (in press). Peer victimisation and internalising difficulties: The mediating role of friendship quality.Journal of Adolescence.

Woods, S., Wolke, D., Nowicki, S., Hall, L. (in press). Emotion recognition abilities and empathy in bullies and victims.Child Abuse & Neglect.

Dautenhahn, K., Woods, S., & Kaouri, C. (2007). Possible connections between bullying behaviour, empathy and imitation. In In K. Dautenhahn & C. Nehaniv (Eds.) Models and mechanisms of imitation and social learning in robots, humans and animals: Behavioural, social and communicative dimensions (pp. 323-339) . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Woods, S., Hall, L., Dautenhahn, K., & Wolke, D. (2007). Implications of gender differences for the development of animated characters for the study of bullying behaviour. Computers in Human Behavior, 23, 770-786.

Woods, S., Dautenhahn, K., & Schulz, J. (2006). Exploring the design space of robots: Children's perspectives. Interacting with Computers, 18, 1390-1418.

Woods, S., & White, E. (2005). The association between bullying behaviour, arousal levels and behaviour problems.Journal of Adolescence, 28, 381-395.

Woods, S., & Wolke, D. (2004). Direct and relational bullying experience among primary school children and academic achievement.Journal of School Psychology, 42, 135-155.

Woods, S.,& Wolke, D. (2003). Does the content of anti-bullying policies inform us about the prevalence of direct and relational bullying behaviour in primary schools?, Educational Psychology, 23, 381-401.

Wolke, D., Woods, S., Bloomfield, L., & Karstadt, L. (2001). Bullying involvement in primary school and common health problems. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 85, 197-201.

Administrative and Professional

Member of British Psychological Society
Assistant Admissions Tutor
Reviewer for several journals