Reality Bending Lab › News › 🎉 Oliver Collins awarded a Junior Research Assistant scholarship
🎉 Oliver Collins awarded a Junior Research Assistant scholarship
2026-07-01 · Awards · Oliver Collins
Congratulations to Oliver Collins, 2nd year student, who has been awarded the Junior Research Assistant (JRA) scholarship!
Oliver will be working on a project exploring the relationship between illusions and bodily states, continuing the lab's interest in how perception and physiology shape each other. We are looking forward to seeing where this project takes him.
Exploring the neuropsychology of reality and its distortions.
The Reality Bending Lab, led by Dominique Makowski at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK, conducts
world-leading research on reality perception, illusions, fake news, AI-beliefs, deception and its links with
emotions, cognitive control and the Self. Using recording signals from the body (ECG, EDA…) and the brain
(EEG), we analyse data using advanced modelling (Bayesian statistics, chaos theory, computational models) and
develop
open-source tools to improve
neuropsychological science.
Pevensey 1 - room 2B7, School of Psychology, University of Sussex, BN1 9QH
University of Sussex
Brighton
is the sunniest city in the UK and, by some margin, its most cheerfully strange — on the sea, an
hour from London. The University of Sussex sits just above it in the South Downs, and its School of
Psychology is one of the largest and strongest in the country.
It is famous for its research on consciousness and interoception, with scientists like
Anil Seth,
Andy Clark,
Zoltan Dienes
and
Hugo Critchley, its teaching of cutting-edge psychological methods (with stats rockstar
Andy Field), its history of multidisciplinary research (arts and science), and its radical engagement in
open and disruptive science.
