Polly Dalton

Polly Dalton is a Professor of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London, leading the Attention Lab. She specialises in the psychological mechanisms of human attention, awareness, and multisensory experiences. As Head of Audience Futures at the CoSTAR National Lab, she conducts large-scale interdisciplinary studies on user engagement with technologies. She also co-directs the UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in AI for Digital Media Inclusion.

Her research explores attentional capture, sensory modalities (vision, hearing, touch), and applied contexts like aviation, remote vehicle operation, and VR. Projects include CoSTAR (Creative Industries R&D), StoryFutures (immersive storytelling), and HYPHEN (immersive production tools).

Her work has been featured on BBC Breakfast TV, Sky News, The Guardian, and MSNBC. She collaborates internationally and contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals through pro-environmental behavior research.

Key grants include funding from AHRC, Innovate UK, and Daphne Jackson Trust. She mentors graduate students and oversees labs focused on advancing understanding of human experience in technological contexts.