Lara Maister

Dr. Lara Maister is a Lecturer (Teaching & Research) at the School of Psychology and Sport Science, Bangor University. Her research focuses on self-representation, self-awareness, embodiment, and interoception, with a particular emphasis on how bodily self-representations interact with conceptual self-beliefs and influence social cognition.

• Email: l.maister@bangor.ac.uk
• Office: Room 366, Brigantia

Research Interests: Dr. Maister investigates bodily self-representation from both external (physical appearance) and internal (interoceptive sensitivity) perspectives. Her work explores how self-representation affects empathy, motor mimicry, and emotional contagion, with recent projects addressing interoception in infancy and therapeutic applications for children with complex trauma.

Publication Trends: Her research spans cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, and social cognition, with recurring themes in interoception, body representation, and multisensory integration. She frequently collaborates on studies involving infants, primates, and clinical populations.

Advising Opportunities: Dr. Maister accepts self-funded PhD students and offers a fully-funded project on bodily self-representation, including topics like "Self-Portraits: Visualising the Bodily Self-Representation" and "Baby-beats: Cardiac Interoception in Infancy".

Labs & Teams: She collaborates with researchers including Manos Tsakiris and Katerina Fotopoulou, contributing to the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute at Bangor University.