Lisa Townsend

Studies: Psychology BSc (Hons)

Award winning Humanities and Social Science research at the Lancaster University Undergraduate Conference 

What’s your name and what course are you studying?

My name is Lisa Townsend and I am studying psychology at the University Centre at Blackburn College.

What have you recently involved in?

I've recently been involved in an undergraduate conference through Lancaster University and it's allowed me to present my third-year major project research and to an audience of undergraduates from all over the globe.

Tell us about the research conducted and presented?

My research aimed to look at the attitudes that the general public hold to the rehabilitation of major offenders.

How did you conduct research and put it together?

I put it together using a mixed methods approach. We started with a quantitative base and a questionnaire to discuss what attitudes people currently hold towards prisoners and then I use the qualitative approach to get emerging themes as to why people have these attitudes towards rehabilitation.

What skills did you develop during this?

It added to two skills that I currently have and it made me much more confident at public speaking and much more confident to present my research.  This was really beneficial in the third year because we have to present the dissertation that we're doing. It was a really good opportunity to practice my presentation skills before actually having to present it to the class of students.

How did your teaching team prepare you for feeling confident in presenting to an international audience?

My research supervisor Rebecca helped me massively with not only my confidence in presenting the research but also getting my presentation ready.  She helped me down to spending extra time with me going through it and checking my presentation, checking my web page and making sure that what I thought was correct and how I was speaking to people was actually correct.  

How did this add to your learning?

It added to what we're currently learning because are doing a forensic psychology module and forensics is something that I'm really interested in. It’s something that I'm going on to study at a master's level and the topic itself is something that's always interested me. I've always done prior reading around it and it was just one of those subjects that I really wanted to know more. My major project was the perfect opportunity to be able to get more information on it but also answer the questions that I had about the subject and add the knowledge that we were taught during the lectures as well.

How did presenting at the conference make you feel?

Presenting at the conference just made me feel really positive about my research. It also made me feel really positive about the course that I'm doing and that the research that I'm doing is applicable to the real world and it's not just research that I was doing to get a mark at the end of my degree it's research that really can make a difference in the world of like forensic psychology.

What feedback did you receive?

They gave me some great feedback that they were happy with how I presented and they thought that I had a real keen understanding of how it applied to real world settings and especially in forensic psychology.  They also thought I had an understanding from the participant view of how it would affect everyday life as well as from a criminal point of view.

What is the best thing about your course?

The best thing about the psychology course at University Centre Blackburn College is the friendliness and support of the staff and I think that it helps massively when you've got support. The tutors are easy to talk to as they explain everything well but also that the things that you're learning is stuff that is applicable to every day every single job. The degree itself is so diverse in different workplaces but also when you come and start you learn new things that you didn't think you were interested in before and it opens up new areas of Interest.

Tell me about the award you have won

The conference gave out three awards and it was for the best presentations in specific fields and my research won best Humanities and social science research.