Gillian Murphy

Gillian Murphy is an Associate Professor in the School of Applied Psychology at University College Cork, Ireland. She is also a funded investigator at Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software. Murphy specializes in cognitive psychology and human memory, with a focus on the reconstructive nature of memory and its implications for legal, technological, and personal contexts.

Research Interests

• Human memory's adaptive and fallible qualities
• Cognitive offloading through technology (e.g., photography, GPS navigation)
• Memory distortion in eyewitness testimony
• Evolutionary benefits of imperfect memory
• Interactions between memory, mental health, and autobiographical recall

Murphy co-authored the popular science book Memory Lane with Ciara Greene, which explores how memories evolve, the role of forgetting in efficiency and emotional well-being, and the interplay between memory and imagination. Her work emphasizes the constructive, often biased nature of memory retrieval and its broader societal impacts.