I am Senior Lecturer at James Cook University, Singapore. In my doctoral research at Radboud University Nijmegen, I worked with Prof Rob Holland and Prof Ad van Knippenberg, studying emotion-sensation interactions. For example, how does emotion influence how we taste, smell, or hear things? Why do these influences happen? When should we expect these effects to occur or not? How do these influences impact public health? More details can be found here.
Beyond my professional side, I am constantly curious about the cultural aspects of food. When I was living with flatmates in the Netherlands, they cannot stand my cooking because of the garlic smell. When I was living in India, there are some tastes that I find it hard to swallow, such as buttermilk. What makes people classify food and nonfood? And what has our disgust systems got to do with it?
In recent years, I have gradually moved into field experimentation, with special interest in behavioural change. Together with my students, we worked on uncovering (literally) whether rubbish bin designs influence waste segregation, whether subtle art work influences human traffic patterns, whether reading Mindset reduces academic stress, and the latest: whether a five-rupee reduction in library fines leads fewer or more people to return library books late!