Nicola Savill

Dr Nicola Savill is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at York St John University and co-lead of the REF Unit of Assessment. She holds a PhD from Bangor University (2011) and MSc/BSc degrees in Psychological Research and Human Psychology. Her research focuses on cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms underlying language processing, particularly reading, verbal short-term memory, and phonological binding. She employs experimental psycholinguistics, EEG, and neuroimaging techniques, collaborating with the University of York on projects like phonological binding in verbal memory.

Education includes a PhD in Psychology from Bangor University, an MSc in Psychological Research from the University of Wales Bangor, and a BSc in Human Psychology from Aston University. Her work addresses semantic and phonological influences on language processing, with studies on developmental dyslexia and bilingualism.

Research interests span phonological function, semantic retrieval, and neuroimaging. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a reviewer for journals including Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience and PLoS ONE. She teaches modules on biological bases of behavior, advanced topics in brain and behavior, and research methods.

Her lab collaborations focus on cognitive neuroscience and EEG studies. She welcomes PhD candidates interested in experimental psychology and EEG-based research on language and memory.