Allow me to introduce myself…

My name is Carlie Hughes, I live on the beautiful Wirral (UK) and I’m a third year Psychology student at the University of Liverpool and have specialised in the following areas: Psychobiology of Pain, Neurobiology of Emotions, Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience, Cyberspsychology, Psychology of Health and have undertaken a dissertation exploring the relationship between pain attitudes, pain words and short-term memory. I’m particularly proud of my dissertation as it gave me the opportunity to harness and develop my innovative side by creating two memory games in Microsoft’s Visual Basic Application. Learning to code was challenging (as I had never done anything like it before) but it is now a passion of mine and want to move onto furthering my coding knowledge in Python, especially for smartphone apps. The possibilities truly are endless!

Most of my work experience involves the non-profit sector, working alongside service users. I am currently a volunteer at Wirral Mencap. My official title is “Buddy” but I feel it’s more than that, it’s the invaluable opportunity to learn from and aid an individual with a learning disability to help them further develop and nurture their independence until they can do it alone. A quote from Nanny McPhee is appropriate here “When you want me but no longer need me, is when I must go”. I am passionate about charitable giving and aiding the non-profit sector in any way that I can and so it was only natural that I decided to focus on researching the gender gap in charitable giving (men appear to give less [time and money] than women) for my systematic review. So stay tuned and I will keep you posted as to the factors that could be involved in this giving imbalance between the sexes.

As I have given a brief overview of my education background and work experience, I feel it is only necessary to mention my passions in life. After all, our passions are what motivates and drives us. I am passionate about learning and love a challenge. The bigger the challenge, the more my curiosity will prevail! But most of all, I’m passionate about people. I love meeting people from all walks of life and exploring their life journey – the good, the bad and the ugly – as I emphatically believe that it’s from people we learn from the most.