The researchers

People & collaborators

Meet the researchers and collaborators who have contributed to the lab’s work on psychological time.

The team

Lab members

Dr Luke Jones
Lab director

Dr Luke Jones

The time lab is currently run by Dr Luke Jones, lecturer in psychology. Luke came to Manchester to read for a PhD under Prof John Wearden in 2000, and has been the lab director since 2005. You can view Luke's University profile for more information about his work. You can find a list of Luke's publications here
Ruoyu Zhang
Lab member

Ruoyu Zhang

Ruoyu began work in the time perception lab in 2022, conducting research for her final year undergraduate project exploring retrospective timing.  After graduating from her BSc (hons), Ruoyu  followed up on this research for her dissertation forming part of her masters in research (MRes) project. Ruoyu has now completed her masters and has started her PhD research, supervised by Dr Luke Jones and Prof Ellen Poliakoff with the proposed title being " Beyond the dichotomy: Introducing the retrospective timing component to the internal-clock mechanism based computational model"
 

Alisha Hawkeswood
Lab member

Alisha Hawkeswood

My name is Alisha Hawkeswood, and I graduated from the University of Manchester in 2026 with a BSc (Hons) in Psychology. For my final-year dissertation, I investigated internal clock processes over extended time durations under the supervision of Dr Luke Jones.

Over the summer, I am volunteering in the lab, contributing to ongoing research projects. I will continue working in the field of time perception as I return to the University of Manchester for my Master of Research in Experimental Psychology with Data Science during the 2026–27 academic year.

​My broader academic interests include metaphysics, psychophysics, and consciousness and I am particularly interested in bridging philosophical questions with empirical psychological research.
Puhan Hou
Lab member

Puhan Hou

Puhan Hou is a former MRes Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology student with a research interest in time perception. His undergraduate research examined how auditory stimuli, including click trains, influence prospective time estimation. During his MRes, he investigated retrospective time estimation for longer-duration stimuli across auditory, visual, audiovisual, and silent conditions. He has also recently completed an MSc in Health Psychology and is currently seeking research assistant opportunities to further develop his research experience.
The wider network

Former lab members

Dr Emily Williams
Former member

Dr Emily Williams

Emily has studied at the University of Manchester since 2011 when she started her BSc and has worked with Dr Luke Jones since her final year project in 2013-14. This project investigated visuo-spatial imagery for time in non-synaesthetes, which found linear organisations of weeks and circular organisations of years to be common in the general population. Following her first class degree, Emily completed a Masters of Research, investigating the relationship between internal clock speed and information processing speed, and its modulation by repetitive stimulation such as click trains; and gained a distinction as well as her first publication. Emily started her PhD in 2015, supervised by Dr Luke Jones and Dr Andrew Stewart, investigating the pacemaker component of the internal clock, funded by the ESRC and the University's President's Doctoral Scholarship Award. In 2019 Emily submitted her thesis, passed her Viva and graduated with her PhD. Emily continues to work on time perception with the other members of the lab, but is now a postdoctoral researcher at Leeds University. You can read about her current work here.
Dr Martin Casassus
Former member

Dr Martin Casassus

Martin is a psychologist with interests in cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and research methods. His current questions are about time perception, the neurophysiology underlying the process and how time perception may affect social skills such as social coordination, researching with clinical populations such as Autism Spectrum Conditions and Traumatic Brain Injury. After finishing his undergraduate degree and professional qualification in Psychology at Universidad Central de Chile, Martin worked in several research projects as a research assistant and as clinical psychologist at an Autism Rehabilitation Centre. In 2014 Martin moved to Manchester to pursue a science career and after work in supporting services, and as a research assistant at Head Forward Centre and at the University of Manchester, in 2016 he was granted the prestigious President’s Doctoral Scholar Award to pursue PhD in Psychology at University of Manchester on a project examining prospective timing in Autism Spectrum Conditions, supervised by Dr Luke Jones, Dr Ellen Poliakoff  and Dr Emma Gowen. UPDATE: June 2020 - Martin has now passed his viva and has obtained his PhD. Update July 2026. Martin is now Head of the School of Psychology in Universidad Santo Tomás, Chile.
Joanna Witowska
Former member

Joanna Witowska

Joanna is a PhD student at the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Warsaw, where she is a researcher in the Intelligence Cognition Emotion Lab. She also gained her professional experiences abroad at the University of Cologne, University of Freiburg, in the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg, and Oxford Brookes University. Her PhD thesis examined psychological time and cognitive functioning. Besides time Joanna is also interested in the psychology of religion and cross-cultural psychology. Joanna spent a 6 months internship in the Time Perception lab due to a doctoral scholarship Etiuda (no 2019/32/T/HS6/00081) funded by National Science Centre, Poland. In collaboration with Dr Luke Jones and researchers from Royal Northern College of Music and University of Coimbra, Joanna has been engaged in the research project examining both the time perception and music.
You can find a list of Joanna's publications here.

Georgia Dunning
Former member

Georgia Dunning

Georgia was an MRes Psychology student at The University of Manchester and has been studying at the University since her undergraduate Psychology degree began in 2016. Georgia conducted her her MRes dissertation project under the supervision of Dr Luke Jones, which looked at “An Investigation of Motor Timing in Autism”. Georgia is also working as a research assistant within Clinical Neuropsychology at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust. Update: Georgia is now studing for a doctorate in Clinical Psychology.
Hui Wen Chong (Hailey)
Former member

Hui Wen Chong (Hailey)

 Hui Wen (Hailey) was a final year MSci Biology student at the University of Manchester, supervised by Dr Luke Jones.  Hui Wen has a vast interest in many disciplines of biological research, as seen from her previous summer placements.  She was a research assistant in Prof. Wong’s Pathology Lab at University Malaya Medical Centre in 2015 to assist on on-going researches such as Alzheimer’s Disease and Japanese Encephalitis.  Later, she worked in Prof. Takano’s Lab to invent a sweat alcohol biosensor ‘AlcoPatch’ as part of the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition 2016.  Her boldness in trying new things has also led to her first publication in identifying gene polymorphisms associated with Schizophrenia using a bioinformatics approach. Hui Wen’s current core interest revolves around time perception and the effects of modality on perceptual duration judgements in 
                                                     Working Memory. UPDATE: Hui Wen has now graduted her MSci with a distinction.
Ezgi Melisa Yüksel
Former member

Ezgi Melisa Yüksel

Ezgi is 3rd year Psychology student interested in cognitive psychology and researches in Middle East Technical University. In 2016 spring semester, Ezgi was working as assistant in Developmental laboratory and in 2016 summer worked as intern in Cognitive Developmental lab of University of Granada, Spain. For a year, she worked as an assistant in the cognitive psychology laboratory and conducting research about memory. Recent interest of her is time perception, how people's time perception can be characterised and why the perception of time changes across people. Ezgi was awarded an ERASMUS scholarship and spent the summer of 2017 working in the time lab at Manchester with Dr Luke Jones.
UPDATE: Ezgi is now at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she has succesfully completed her master thesis and defence and is now studying for a PhD.  Ezgi's master's thesis was on the topic of false memory and fluency. She is now investigating factors that might improve cognitive processes (which was inspired by her interest in the work done in Manchester on  
                                                          how click-trains can alter/improve cognitive processes.)
Elena Solodow
Former member

Elena Solodow

Elena is a New York native who received her bachelor's degree in Psychology from Lancaster University and is currently completing an MSc in Neuroimaging for Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Manchester. She has been a research assistant for various social cognition experiments, and intends to pursue a PhD in developmental neuroscience to investigate social and emotional cognition in infants and young children. She assisted in a physiological study of time perception with Emily Williams, determining the impact of click trains on a hypothesised internal clock mechanism.  
Dr Jessica Henderson
Former member

Dr Jessica Henderson

JeJessica is currently completing an MRes in psychology at the University of Manchester, supervised by Dr Luke Jones. She is currently assisting Emily Williams with her study ‘A physiological investigation of repetitive stimulation on time perception’. Once she has completed her MRes Jessica will be working at Liverpool John Moores University as a research assistant for Dr Ruth Ogden on a project investigating the impact of stressors on time perception. 
Update: Jessica completed her MRes in 2018.
Update: After working as a research assistant for Dr Ruth Ogden, Jessica is now studying for a PhD at the University of Liverpool.
Update: Jessica has now passed her PhD and is working as a Consumer Scientist at Unilever.
Prof Andrew Stewart
Former member

Prof Andrew Stewart

Andrew is an experimental psychologist interested in how people mentally represent different aspects of the world, including concepts of time.  His particular research interests centre around language comprehension, with his most recent work focusing on the influence of context on how people represent and understand hypothetical situations and abstract information.  You can find a list of Andrew's publications here.

Update: Andrew is now Head of Department in Computer Science
Dr Sam Couth
Former member

Dr Sam Couth


Sam completed his PhD at the University of Manchester in 2015  investigating the effects of ageing on multisensory integration. He worked on two post-doctoral roles which explored technological solutions to detecting and monitoring symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s and dementia. Sam's work on time perception includes investigating the temporal limits of visual and tactile interactions. He has also examinedwhether entraining internal clock speed using auditory stimuli can affect the perception of a well-known audiovisual illusion.  Sam is now a lecturer at the University of Manchester.
Dr Daniel Poole
Former member

Dr Daniel Poole

Daniel is a Postdoctoral Teaching Assistant in the School of Psychological Sciences. Dan is interested in how aspects of time perception may be affected in Autism Spectrum Condition, in particular the temporal alignment between the different senses.  From September 2017 Dan worked on our 3 year ESRC grant investigating timing processes in autism. Dan is now a lecturer at the University of Sheffield but still collaborates with us here at the time lab.
 
Working together

Collaborators

Professor Michelle Phillips
Collaborator

Professor Michelle Phillips

Professor Michelle Phillips is Director of Creative Manchester and Professor of Music in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at the University of Manchester, roles she took up in September 2026. She leads the University’s interdisciplinary Creative Manchester research platform, bringing together researchers, cultural organisations and communities. Her research interests include music perception, audience responses to live and recorded performance, neurological responses to music, and the experience of time during music listening.

Previously, Michelle was Professor and Head of Enterprise (Academic) at the Royal Northern College of Music. Her research on music and time includes investigating how musical expectation and predictability influence perceived duration. She is co-editor of Music and Time: Psychology, Philosophy, Practice and joint Editor-in-Chief of the journal Psychology of Music.
Collaborating research group

BEAM Lab

The Time Perception Lab collaborates with the Body, Eyes and Movement (BEAM) Lab at The University of Manchester, jointly led by Professors Ellen Poliakoff and Emma Gowen. BEAM investigates how the brain uses sensory information, including vision and touch, to guide action and interaction with others. Its research encompasses imitation, movement and coordination in autism and Parkinson’s disease, using methods including psychophysics, eye-tracking, motion tracking and EEG. Our collaborations include research on time perception in autism.

Visit the BEAM Lab website →