Dr Claire Heard PhD, MSc, BSc

Dr Claire Heard was awarded her BSc in Psychology (2013) and MSc in Research Methods in Psychology (2014) from the University of Essex. She was awarded her PhD in Psychology from King’s College London in 2018, which was funded jointly by the ESRC and Winton Fund/University of Cambridge. Since her PhD which focussed on the topic of risk communication and perception of health-related information, she had two main academic positions, working first as a Research Associate in the War Studies Department at King’s College London (exploring decision making in disasters and extreme events) and then as an LSE Fellow in Decision Science, where she taught undergraduate, postgraduates and executives about the science behind decision making, and continued her research investigating risk perception and choice architecture, primarily with a public health domain focus.

Her current work continues within this area, investigate risk perception, decision making and choice architecture in the health field as well as other applied fields. In addition, she now investigates in the educational space, looking at topics related to inclusive education, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) in learning and assessments.

Claire is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academic, Chartered member of the British Psychological Society and Associate of King’s College. She is also a member of the Society for Judgement and Decision Making.

Research Interests

Her research interests include the areas of applied judgement and decision making, risk perception, risk communication and the use of choice architecture interventions. In particular, much of her research falls under two core themes: exploring perceptions around and influences of factors such as affect and time on our judgements (e.g., of risk) and decision making, as well as exploring the application of choice architecture and debiasing to improving decision making. As part of these interests, she is also interested in the application of process-tracing (e.g., eye-tracking) methodologies in investigate our information search and decision-making process.

Her previous work has, in particular, focussed on the application of theories of risk and affect, as well as choice architecture to the domain of personal/public health, investigating aspects such as how format, language or layout of information changes our perceptions of, understanding of and subsequent use of health information. In the future, she intends to continue working towards applying decision making insights to this area, as well as extending the application of these theories and ideas to other domains and to understanding use of choice architecture for those with visual function difficulties.

In addition, her current research also investigates topics related to inclusive education and Artificial intelligence (AI), which include studies looking at how to improve guidance and support surrounding use of AI, and incorporation of AI into assessments.

Research areas:

• Risk Perception and Risk communication
• Affect, Judgements and Decision Making
• Choice Architecture & Debiasing
• Information Design & Information Search
• Inclusive Education and AI in Learning and Assessments

PhD Supervision: Claire would be interested in supervising students in any of the areas above.

Expertise and Public Engagement

In addition to academic conference attendance, in the past, she has been invited to speak at several professional organisations, such as acting as a presenter and panel discussant at the QAA Effective Decision Making in HE webinar and co-developing an invited webinar on boosting your decision mindware for CEOs.