Research Team
Current Members
- Dr Peter Koval
Co-director of Lab
He/him
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
- Dr Katie Greenaway
Co-director of Lab
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
- Dr Elise Kalokerinos
Co-director of Lab
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
- Dr Ella Moeck
Postdoctoral Fellow
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
- Sarah O'Brien
Lab Manager
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
PhD Students
- Valentina Bianchi
PhD Student
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
bianchiv@student.unimelb.edu.au
Valentina's research focuses on secrecy processes in everyday life, emotion and emotion regulation, social connectedness as well as meta-science. Valentina is also a Senior Clinical Psychologist and holds academic interests across clinical and social psychology, having completed Master degrees in both areas (University of Padova and Deakin University).
- Anh Tran
PhD Student
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
hoanganht@student.unimelb.edu.au
Anh's research focuses on interpersonal emotion regulation - why and how we influence our own and other's emotions in social contexts. A Master of Applied Psychology graduate from the University of Melbourne, she is also interested in translating research findings into actionable insights to solve practical problems.
- Rachel Freeman-Robinson
PhD Student
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
freemanr1@student.unimelb.edu.au
Rachel is interested in how attention, acceptance, and effort influence emotion regulation. She is also a tutor in research methods and social psychology at the University of Melbourne.
- Aya Uchida
PhD Student
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences & Hebrew University of Jerusalem School of Psychology
aya.uchida@student.unimelb.edu.au
Aya's research is interested in how and why individuals and cultures differ in emotion regulation and the role of motivation in emotion regulation.
2023 Honours Students
- Devika Prakash (she/her)
- Cedrick Bergola (he/him)
- Emily Chan (she/her)
- Sarah Pearse (she/her)
- Yuet Sum (Janice) Wong (she/her)
- Jessica Polhill (she/her)
- Janice Priskila Hermawan (she/her)
Research Assistants / Visiting students / Research Interns
- Ella Wilson
Research Assistant
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne
- Hepbyrne Davies
Research Assistant
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences
- Komal Grewal
Research Assistant (EMOTE)
She/her
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne
- Teresa Bolzenkoetter
Visiting PhD Student
She/her
Institute of Psychology, Free University of Berlin
Teresa is interested in repetitive negative thinking and emotions in everyday life and explores how brief mindfulness interventions can change them.
Past Members
2022
- Akshay Chandran (Honours student)
- James Teague (Honours student)
- Janine Griffiths (Honours student)
- Patrick Davies (Honours student)
- Namwon (Kate) Kim (Honours student)
- Ankita Sen (Honours student)
- Julian Weiner-Angelopulo (Honours student)
- Jessica Lee (Honours student)
- Belinda Dalton (Honours student)
- Beth Clarke (Student intern)
- Skye Burnley (Student intern)
- Isobel Moore (Student intern)
2021
- Hayley Medland (PhD and Clinical Masters student)
- Yixia Zheng (PhD student)
- Paul Garrett
- Jack Woods (Honours student)
- Kristina Mei (Honours student)
- Joanne (Jo) Kostopoulos (Honours student)
- Yehudi (Hudi) Saling (Honours student)
- Lachlan Raymond Bagnara (Honours student)
- Komal Grewal (Honours student)
- Dr Bill Bingley (Research assistant)
- Xin Yi (Sydnei) Yang (Research Intern)
- Jasmin Kaur Sareen (Research Intern)
- Sophie Warner (Research Intern)
- Amy Bowring (Research Intern)
2020
- Annabelle Patten (Honours student)
- Emma McIntosh (Honours student)
- Lachlan Anthony (Honours student)
- Melissa Petrolo (Honours student)
- Rachel Sobel (Honours student)
- Tammy Lim (Honours student)
- Christine Beckett (Research intern)
- Patrick Burnett (Research intern)
- Nicholas Cheng (Research intern and Honours student)
- Dominik Kristen-Parsch (Research intern)
- Harry Speagle (Research intern)
- Sophie Yeung (Research intern)
2019
- Amani Nasarudin (Honours student)
- Jardine Louise Mitchell (Honours student)
- Jessica Mortlock (Honours student)
- Sylvia Chu Lin (Honours student)
- Bruce McIntyre (Research intern)
- Steven Leu (Research intern)
- Julia Schreiber (Visiting Master's student)
- Yaoxi Shi (Visiting Master's student)
2018
- Jordan Hinton (Research Assistant and Lab Manager). Now at the Australian Catholic University
- Ami Mane (Honours student)
- Aamna Shah (Honours student)
- Khai Shin Lee (Honours student)
- Ann Ee Ching (Honours student)
- Sarah Paling (Visiting Master’s student)
- Orsi Benke (Visiting Master’s student)
- David Mussoff (Research intern)
- Stephanie Au Yeung (Research intern)
Furry Friends of the FEEL Lab














External Collaborators
- Professor James Gross
Stanford University
Professor James Gross
James J. Gross received his B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. He is Professor of Psychology at Stanford and Director of the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory. His research focuses on emotion and emotion regulation, and this research employs both experimental and individual-difference methods. His teaching includes introductory psychology as well as advanced seminars on emotion and emotion regulation.
- Professor Peter Kuppens
KU Leuven
University of Leuven
Professor Peter Kuppens
Peter Kuppens is Professor in the Research Group of Quantitative Psychology and Individual Differences at KU Leuven, Belgium. Peter's research focuses on componential (e.g., appraisal) theories of emotions, individual differences in emotional appraisal, experience, and dynamics and their relationships with personality and well-being, and formal models for contextualised personality and emotion research.
- Associate Professor Tom Hollenstein
Queen's University, Canada
Associate Professor Tom Hollenstein
Tom Hollenstein is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Canada. Tom's research examines socioemotional development, particularly in adolescence. Specifically, Tom's research focuses on the regulation of emotion as evidenced by changes in self-reported feelings, autonomic psychophysiology, and behavioural expressions. Tom is also active in developing and applying methods for the analysis of change, including state space grids (www.statespacegrids.org).
- Professor Maya Tamir
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Professor Maya Tamir
Professor Maya Tamir is the Chair of the Psychology Department and the director of the Emotion and Self-Regulation Laboratory at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is an expert in emotion and emotion regulation. Her research examines motivational factors in emotion regulation and their implications for social and psychological functioning.
- Professor John Gleeson
Australian Catholic University
Professor John Gleeson
John Gleeson is Professor and Head of the School of Psychology at the Australian Catholic University. John is a clinical psychologist with 20 years experience in severe mental health problems. His research interests include psychological treatments in youth with psychosis, the use of moderated on-line social interventions for youth with mental health problems, and experience sampling methods in the understanding of anxiety and mood problems.
- Associate Professor Renee Thompson
Washington University
Associate Professor Renee Thompson
Renee Thompson’s research centers on understanding the everyday emotional experience in individuals diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder. She is principal investigator of the Emotion and Mental Health Lab. Thompson uses multi-method approaches, including ecological momentary assessment, to examine affective instability and other temporal dynamics of emotional experience. She is also interested in how components of emotion regulation (e.g., emotional awareness) and interpersonal factors (e.g., perceived rejection) affect the emotional experience of depressed, anxious, and healthy samples.
- Associate Professor Michael Slepian
Columbia Business School
Associate Professor Michael Slepian
Michael studies the psychology of secrets and how keeping secrets affect variables that govern social and organizational life, particularly trust and motivation. He has studied the consequences of keeping secrets, including how they change our behavior, judgments and actions. He studies the effects of both personal and professional secrets for the individual secret keeper as well as whether we can tell when others are concealing information from us.
- Dr Tony Gutentag
School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University
Dr Tony Gutentag
Gutentag suggests that making health professionals more strongly motivated to regulate their emotions will make them more successful at regulating them, and will thus contribute to their well-being. Health professionals’ well-being is important in and of itself, but it also contributes to their work quality (e.g., physicians who are less burned-out are more attentive to their patients). In our lab we do basic science, as well as design and test interventions to promote health professionals’ well-being.