Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences' Inaugural Lecture series

Join us for an exciting event in room 4013 in the Centenary Building at the University of Southampton, where we will be hosting a series of engaging lectures from newly appointed Professors at the Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences.

During the event, our Professors will present a lecture to highlight their research, real-world impact and future research directions.

At our next event on Wednesday 26 November 2025, Professor Denis Drieghe from the School of Psychology and Professor Maggie Donovan-Hall from the School of Health Sciences will be presenting their research.

Professor Denis Drieghe obtained his PhD in Experimental Psychology from Ghent University, Belgium, where he subsequently held consecutive positions as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow funded by the Fund for Scientific Research – Flanders. During this period, he was awarded several travel grants, which enabled him to spend a total of 2.5 years collaborating with Professors Keith Rayner and Sandy Pollatsek at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (USA). He later joined the University of Southampton as a Visiting Research Fellow, working with Professor Simon Liversedge, before being appointed Lecturer in the Department of Psychology in 2010. He is now Professor of Experimental Psychology in the School of Psychology, where he also serves as Deputy Head of the School (Research).

Professor Drieghe’s research lies in the field of eye movements during reading. His early work concentrated on parafoveal processing, before broadening to investigate task effects in reading (e.g., reading for comprehension versus skim reading) and individual differences in reading ability (e.g., spelling skills and reading proficiency). Over the course of his career, his research has examined reading across multiple languages—including English, Dutch, Finnish, Chinese, Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, and Hindi—and has involved direct cross-linguistic comparisons, both between native speakers and within bilingual populations.

Professor Maggie Donovan-Hall is a Professor of Psychology of Prosthetics and Orthotics in the School of Health Sciences at the University of Southampton. She has a background in Psychology and completed a master’s degree in health psychology before undertaking a part-time mixed-methods PhD in the School of Psychology, while also working as a researcher on several projects.

Maggie joined the School of Health Sciences as a lecturer in 2004, focusing her research on the psychosocial aspects of assistive technology, particularly prosthetic and orthotic (P&O) devices. She co-founded the cross-faculty People Powered Prosthetics Research Group, which aims to improve the lives of individuals living with limb loss in both high- and low-resource settings. She also co-leads the Active Living Research Group, which develops innovative technologies and clinical practices that promote active living and healthy ageing.

As a balanced-pathway Professor, Maggie is committed to research-led education co-developed with service users and stakeholder partners. She established the MSc in Amputation and Prosthetic Rehabilitation, now celebrating its 10th anniversary, and is a lead and co-applicant on the first Centre for Doctoral Training in Prosthetics and Orthotics (CDT in P&O), delivered in collaboration with Salford, Imperial, and Strathclyde Universities.

Info: Professor Steve Darby, Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences, opens the event.

Info: Eye-tracking is widely acknowledged as the methodological gold standard for examining the cognitive mechanisms underlying reading. A substantial body of research has demonstrated that a variety of linguistic factors systematically modulate both the duration and spatial distribution of eye movements. The field of eye-movement research in reading has, arguably, been overly concentrated on a single, highly controlled task: the careful reading of an isolated, self-contained sentence by native speakers, predominantly in English. In his inaugural lecture, Professor Denis Drieghe will address how this narrow empirical focus has resulted in an unduly restricted theoretical perspective on reading. He will do so by examining reading across a broader range of contexts, including different tasks, extended formats, participants with varying levels of reading proficiency, in languages with markedly different orthographic systems (e.g., Chinese), and by readers who are non-native speakers.

Info: In her inaugural lecture, Maggie will explore her role as a psychologist working collaboratively within interdisciplinary teams to take a person-centred approach to health technology and service development. She will discuss how partnerships and embedding users’ voices throughout all stages of research and design can enhance the creation of effective, user-focused technologies.

Maggie will also reflect on her career journey, sharing key influences, collaborations, and lessons learned along the way. She will highlight her passion for integrating research-led education and collaborative practice to drive meaningful change and build capacity within the prosthetics and orthotics (P&O) sector.

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