Meet the Classification & Attribution Lab team
Dr Cliódhna O'Connor is a social psychologist and Associate Professor in the UCD School of Psychology, where she leads the Classification & Attribution Lab. Her research explores the social and psychological processes through which we classify individuals into social categories and attribute causal explanations for those groups’ characteristics.
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Julienne Debono is a PhD researcher in the UCD School of Psychology. Her research focuses on young people's social representations of anxiety across Ireland and Malta, investigating how these understandings vary across cultural contexts, demographics, and clinical versus subclinical anxiety levels. She previously completed an Erasmus+ traineeship in the Classification & Attribution Lab, which produced a recently published study exploring how ‘trauma’ is represented on TikTok (O’Connor et al., 2025).
Maria Carolina Ellery Corrêa is an MLitt candidate in Psychology at University College Dublin, Her research project, “Crossing Borders, Carrying Labels: A Narrative Study on Autism, Immigration, and Stigma”, explores how autistic immigrants experience stigma and belonging across cultures. Maria Carolina holds a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Porto and has worked in Brazil, Portugal, and Ireland in clinical, educational, and social contexts. She currently works in the healthcare sector supporting autistic individuals and people with intellectual disabilities.
Lisa O’Neill is an Autistic master’s research student at University College Dublin, based within the School of Medicine and co-supervised by Dr O'Connor in the Classification & Attribution Lab. She holds a B.Soc.Sc. (Hons) in Sociology and Social Policy from UCD and is the founder of NeuroConnect, an Autistic-led initiative that uses AI to promote neuroaffirmative professional education. Her research explores the intersection of psychology, health, and technology, focusing on how AI and lived experience can inform the training of professionals who work with Autistic people. Lisa’s work aims to develop evidence-based frameworks that improve understanding, inclusion, and support for Autistic individuals across healthcare and educational settings.
Mingfei Zhang is pursuing a Masters in Psychological Science in the UCD School of Psychology. Her research takes a cross-cultural perspective to explore the relationship between TikTok engagement and youth mental health.
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Emer Compton is a Master's student in Psychological Science at UCD. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from Dublin City University. Emer is conducting a qualitative research project looking at young people's experiences of mental health content on social media.
Leigh Huggard recently successfully defended her PhD, supervised by Dr Cliódhna O'Connor in the UCD School of Psychology. Leigh’s research, funded by a Government of Ireland postgraduate scholarship, explored the content of social attributions for mental illness, their distribution across the population, and their societal consequences. She is currently conducting postdoctoral work at University College Cork.
Bhargav Dave completed an MLitt degree in the UCD School of Psychology. Bhargav’s research investigated the psychological antecedents, correlates and consequences of framing depression in dimensional terms.