Professor Melanie Giles

Overview

Melanie Giles is a Professor of Psychology and Head of School. She is also a Chartered Psychologist and a registered health practitioner with the HCPC.

Her main research interests are in the area of attitudes, specifically the attitude-behaviour relationship and attitude change. She is particularly interested in how social psychological theory can be applied to predict and increase our understanding of health-related behaviours including for example, blood donation, smoking, condom use, oral health and breastfeeding.

She has received significant external funding for this work and has presented her findings at over 100 national and international conferences.

Melanie also has a keen interest in the scholarship of learning and teaching and has led a number of research projects focused on student engagement, employability and peer mentoring. She is a trained PASS/SI Supervisor affiliated to the European Centre for SI/PASS and is responsible for the introduction of the PASS peer-mentoring scheme at Ulster.

She is also a member of the International Academic Peer Learning Network and is currently chair of a special interest group focused on research and evaluation. She is a National Teaching Fellow and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the Centre for Higher Education Research Practice.