I completed my BSc(Hons) in Biological Science at the University of London, and my MSc and DPhil in Experimental Psychology at the University of Sussex.  I then worked in various post-doctoral positions at CSIRO Food Science, the University of Sydney Department of Psychology and at the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.  I started as a lecturer at the Department of Psychology, Macquarie University in 1998, and became a Professor in the Department in 2010.

My primary interests relate to food and eating, interoception, evolutionary psychology, and applied experimental psychology. My current projects are varied: Regulation of food intake and obesity, Food preferences, Food cravings, Desire, Body image, Junk food, Naturalness, Disgust, Stigmatisation, Time perception, Microdosing, Multisensory perception, Hallucinations, Imagery, Chemosensory perception and 'Voodoo' science. 

I have supervised alone or together, a range of projects, including studies on epilepsy, multisensory perception, synesthesia, hallucinations, nutritional neuroscience, managing child behavior, food cravings, phobias and disgust.  All of these projects have used a myriad of different populations and approaches - neuroimaging, neuropsychology, experimental methods, developmental psychology, surveys, interviews and clinical trials.