Stephanie Roughley

Dr. Stephanie Roughley serves as an Education-Focused Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), where she is Teaching Program Director for the Graduate Certificate of Child Development and Graduate Diploma in Psychology (Advanced). She convenes key courses including Physiological Psychology (PSYC3051), Introductory Psychology (PSYC5112), Evaluating Evidence (PSYC5111), and Wellbeing and Resilience (PSYC5116), while teaching across undergraduate and postgraduate programs in research methods, statistics, behavioural neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and child wellbeing.

Her research evolved from foundational work in behavioural neuroscience—investigating dopamine's role in learning associations and incentive motivation through neural manipulations (pharmacological inactivation, DREADDs, optogenetics) and behavioural assays—to her current focus on the Science of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). She now examines cognitive and psychological factors affecting student engagement, with active projects comparing online versus face-to-face teaching outcomes and strategies for enhancing engagement in digital learning environments.

Analysis of her 2019-2024 publications reveals sustained expertise in neural mechanisms of learning, particularly dopamine receptor functions and prefrontal/orbitofrontal cortex roles in decision-making using rodent models. While her 2024 chemogenetics study continues this neuroscience trajectory, the overall publication trend indicates a strategic pivot toward educational research, with recent work increasingly emphasizing online pedagogy and student performance metrics.