Researcher biography

Julie is a Professor in the School of Psychology at The University of Queensland, and is also an Affiliate Professor at The Queensland Brain Institute as well as The Mater Research Institute. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and of the Association for Psychological Science.

Julie leads a group that particularly focuses on how social cognition and prospection are disrupted by normal adult ageing and clinical illness. Social cognition refers to how we perceive, process, and interpret social cues in our environment. Good social cognitive skills are therefore key to mental health and wellbeing because they provide the foundation on which strong social relationships are built. Prospective memory plays a different but equally important role in our everyday lives, critical if we are to appropriately anticipate, plan and/or act with the future in mind.

Julie has published more than 240 peer‑reviewed papers which appear in prestigious outlets that include Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Annual Review of Psychology, Cognition, Psychological Bulletin, Cortex, Developmental Science, Psychology and Aging, Emotion, Brain, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, and Nature Reviews Neurology. Her work has been cited ~ 19,000 times in Scopus and > 34,000 in Google Scholar. In 2020 and 2021, The Australian identified 40 Lifetime Achievers who are "Superstars of Research". These are "chosen for the consistent excellence of their work and the impact they had in their fields." In both years Julie was identified as a Lifetime Achiever and one of the top five researchers in Social Science across all of Australia.

Julie has also received continuous prestigious and highly competitive research funding. This includes two ARC Fellowships and eight ARC Discovery Projects, seven of which she has led as first-named CI. Between 2011 and 2017, Julie was Editor in Chief of the British Journal of Clinical Psychology, and she is currently an Associate Editor for Psychology and Aging and sits on a number of Editorial Boards, including Journal of Aging & Social Policy. Julie has been the recipient of many prestigious awards. This includes the Research Higher Degree Supervision Award (2016) and the Research Mentorship Award (2022) from the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences, competitive across the Faculty's six schools and three research centres. In 2023, Julie was also the sole recipient of The UQ Award for Excellence in Graduate Research Training - Supervision, competitive across all UQ, for "outstanding and exemplary supervisory practice".

Julie is Director of The Queensland Multidisciplinary Initiative for Neurocognitive Difficulties (The QLD MIND Project) and President of The Australasian Society for Philosophy and Psychology.