Robert P. O'Shea

INDEX
Biography || Curriculum Vitae || Research and Publications || Teaching || Professional Affiliations || Information for Prospective Researchers || Binocular Rivalry Bibliography || Personal Stuff || Fun Stuff || Joel's Page|| Disclaimer

Biography

• I was awarded BSc and PhD degrees in Psychology from the University of Queensland. My doctoral dissertation on binocular rivalry was supervised by Boris Crassini. In 1983, I left Australia's fair shores for a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship with Peter Dodwell in the Department of Psychology at Queen's University. There followed two years of another Postdoctoral Fellowship with Randolph Blake at Northwestern University, and a year with Don Mitchell at Dalhousie Univerity.
  
  In 1988, I took up a Lectureship (= Assistant Professorship) in the Department of Psychology, University of Otago. In 1996, I was promoted to Senior Lecturer (= Associate Professor). I have had three study leaves, one at Center for Visual Science at University of Rochester, working with David Williams, one at the Vision Sciences Laboratory of Harvard University working with Patrick Cavanagh, and one at the Center For Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth College working with Paul Corballis.

  More biographical information.

Curriculum vitae (PDF)

Research and Publications

• I have so many interests in human visual perception it makes my eyes blur. Currently I'm working on projects on: binocular rivalry (including its relation to monocular rivalry and the nature of rivalry suppression); early history of binocular vision; interocular transfer of aftereffects; meteorological optics (including why we perceive the bowl of the sky, perception of sun rays and their linear perspective); size and depth perception over large distances; spatial frequency, blur, contrast, and luminance as depth cues; colour constancy with reflected and emitted light; kinetic depth effect; perception of contrast and blur in the peripheral visual field; and vernier acuity with opposite-contrast and dichoptic figures.

  Here are my publications.

Teaching

• Here are my hours for student consultation.
  
• I teach PSYC 323 Sensation and Perception.
• I teach PSYC 352 Contemporary Issues in Psychology.
• I am passionate about teaching good writing, possibly because I find it so hard to write well myself. I have published a book on the subject:

  O'Shea, R. P., Moss, S., & McKenzie, W. (2007). Writing for psychology (5th. ed.) Melbourne: Thomson Australia.

  Click here to go to the website for various editions of the book. It contains some useful, but irreverant, materials concerning the craft of writing.

• I have dabbled in research into the meaning of student ratings:

  O'Shea, R. P. (2000). Title vs first name in student ratings [On-line]. Available: http://psy.otago.ac.nz/r_oshea/title_ratings.html

Professional Affiliations

• Member of Association for Research on Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) 1983-2000.
  
• Associate Editor of Perception & Psychophysics, 1995 - 1998.
• Programme Chair for Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP'97), 1997.
• Co-organizer of the Symposium How the brain constructs reality, 2000.
• Organizer of interdisciplinary Sensation & Perception Seminars 1988-.
• Organizer of 31st Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference (EPC'04), held at University of Otago, 16-18 April 2004.
  

Information for Prospective Researchers

• Students. If you are enrolled as a University of Otago student, you can do a research project with me as part of PSYC 310, PSYC 490 (400-level students), PSYC 495/590 (Master's students), or PhD. To find out about possible topics, check my Reseach Interests, drop into my office during my office hours (99 Union Street) to chat, or send me an e-mail. If you are not enrolled, because, for example, you are from overseas, it may be possible to arrange for you to visit for enough time to work on a project, but you must bring your own funding.
  
  
• Post-doctoral Fellows. At present I regret that I do not have any funds to support post-doctoral fellows. Let me know, however, if you want to apply for, or can supply, your own funding to work on a project with me.
  
  
• Visiting Scholars. If you want to visit to work on a project (e.g., during a sabbatical leave), let me know.
  
  
• Laboratory facilities. My laboratory is Macintosh based. Hardware and software exist to allow independent presentation of moving, coloured stimuli to each eye of observers. Click here for details.

Binocular Rivalry Bibliography

Personal Stuff

Fun Stuff

Joel's Page

Disclaimer

You are visitor number .

This page was created in 1996.
This page was last updated on 16 Nov 2007.
Copyright © Robert P. O'Shea, 2007.

Back to Department of Psychology Home Page .