Dr. Nigel Vahey is a lecturer in psychology, head of research for the School of Social Sciences, Law and Education (SSLE), and director of the EASIER research centre at Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin), Ireland. He is also President of the Association of Contextual Behavioral Science Foundation; and associate editor for both the Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science and the Psychological Record. His research has attracted 740+ academic citations and ~€1.2 million of academic grants/awards/scholarships.

Dr. Vahey’s research uses both qualitative and quantitative research methods to examine how ambivalence, implicit cognition and habits can best be harnessed to address the wide range of social and emotional problems that arise from compulsivity, impulsivity, conflicts of interests and/or dilemmas. For example, his research has tackled the following practical issues: (i) (tobacco) addiction; (ii) the need for authentic communication and collaboration between farmers and policy makers regarding emerging climate change dilemmas; (iii) how acute and chronic stress moderates value judgements (within behavioural economics); (iv) (academic) procrastination; (v) social inclusion/exclusion processes in community development, youth work, employment and service provision; (vi) universal and gamified educational design (including special education); (vii) mental health, psychological flexibility and resilience; (viii) personalized diagnosis (including neuroscientific measures); and (ix) self-esteem and recidivism among youth offenders and (ex-)prisoners.

Dr. Vahey has also published on the philosophy of science, highlighting how neuroscientific/biological reductionism is incompatible with ecological (aka functional contextualistic) analyses of human behaviour. A common thread running throughout Dr. Vahey's work is its focus upon conceptualizing the psychological function of any given behaviour in terms of its ecological context. One crucial implication of this functional contextualistic approach is that human behaviour, and its sustainability, must be predicted and influenced in terms of its functional relationships with the ecological systems that affect it.  

Dr. Vahey welcomes expressions of interest to [email protected] from anyone wishing to collaborate or pursue MPhil/PhD research with him on the above topics.

Prior to joining TU Dublin: Dr. Vahey joined TU Dublin during mid-2019 having worked for three years as a senior post-doctoral researcher with Prof. Robert Whelan at Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience (TCIN) in collaboration with Prof.’s Louise McHugh and Jonathan Bricker. While in TCIN Dr. Vahey’s research focused upon using machine learning algorithms (i.e. a subset of artificial Intelligence) to combine a wide range of psychological and neuroimaging measures as a means of personalizing the diagnosis and treatment of tobacco addiction. Before that, Dr. Vahey lectured psychology in the University of Limerick, Maynooth University and the National College of Ireland while completing his PhD in Maynooth University under the supervision of Prof. Dermot Barnes-Holmes (viva voce January 2016). 

Ambivalence; implicit cognition; impulsivity; addiction; habits; willpower; stress management; procrastination; behavioural economics; public health messaging; sustainable farming; climate change messaging; universal design for learning; inclusive and gamified educational design; neuroscience; personalized diagnosis and treatment of mental health.