Profile

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Lisa Orchard

My CV

  • Education:

    I went to school in Smethwick, which is near Birmingham. I went to Aston University to study psychology for my undergraduate degree. I then worked for a year, before going to the University of Wolverhampton to get my PhD.

  • Qualifications:

    I got 10 GCSEs at school, and went on to study Psychology, Sociology and Maths at A Level. I also got an AS Level in IT but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I did, however, end up loving psychology, and so chose this for my degree subject. Psychology uses a lot of statistics, so my enjoyment for maths came in handy too.

  • Work History:

    My first job was in WHSmith. I love stationery so would often spend more than I should have on notebooks and pens. After that, I got a job as an admin assistant. During my degree I took a year out to work as an assistant clinical psychologist. It helped me decide (eventually) that I didn’t want to do that for a career. After university I took up a job as a teaching assistant.

  • Current Job:

    I am a senior lecturer in psychology, specialising in cyberpsychology research.

    • About Me:

      I teach and research cyberpsychology, which looks at how people behave and interact on the Internet. I’m especially interested in how people use social media.

    • Read more

      Hello! I live near Birmingham with my husband, our two young boys and our cat. I love making clothes and creating scrapbooks – so you will often find me hidden away in my craft space making some new creation. Here I am showing off a jumper I made myself…

      Lisa Orchard wearing a handmade jumper

      I love watching Netflix, eating cheesecake and playing computer games with my boys. We are particularly fond of Minecraft and Paper Mario. I am currently training to be a breastfeeding support worker so that I can volunteer to support families who want to find out more about breastfeeding, and help those who may be finding breastfeeding difficult.

    • Read more

      When I had my first son I didn’t realise how hard breastfeeding could be! I thought it was just something that you do to feed a baby; but it is actually a skill that sometimes takes time to develop. Just like how a baby learns to walk and talk, they sometimes need to learn how to feed. With my second baby I used social media to help get more prepared. I joined Facebook groups, and followed breastfeeding pages. I found it really useful, and began to wonder whether other people used social media to find breastfeeding information; and if they did, were they finding the right information?

      I had already done some research to look at the reasons why people use social media, so this seemed like the perfect topic to explore. I work closely with my friend Dr Wendy Nicholls, which makes researching even more fun.

      Part of our job is to tell people what we have found in our research. Here is a picture of me talking about our research at a conference.

      Dr Lisa Orchard talking about her research

      I never EVER thought I would be able to stand up in a room and talk to so many people. I was always super shy at school (I still am in a way). You get used to it though! I sometimes have to teach classes of 100 students. That can be really scary – but I’m always happy at the end, as it is really nice to talk to people about my work.

       

    • My Typical Day:

      Every day is different! I may be teaching, reading papers, writing papers, or collecting information for my research.

    • Read more

      I work part-time (3 days a week), so I only work Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Usually I would take the train to work – but at the moment I have a desk upstairs that I can work on. Here is my university building:

      Every day is so different – so I will use this week as my example!

      I have a couple of lectures coming up so I spent some time planning for these. I really enjoy thinking of the best ways to explain different things to my students and putting PowerPoint slides together. I also need to do lots of reading to make sure I am teaching new and exciting things.

      I will spend perhaps an hour or so each day in ‘office hours’. This is when my students can come and talk to me about anything they need help on. This week I have had lots of students’ work to mark as well.

      When I am researching, I can do all kinds of fun things! This week I interviewed a breastfeeding mother and talked to her about how she uses her social media. Once I have interviewed some more people, I can analyse the data. This is when I re-read all of the interviews and look for common patterns in the kinds of things people talk about.

    • What I'd do with the prize money:

      We already run a successful ‘Girls in Science’ initiative. I would like to develop this further by developing YouTube videos and purchasing further resources for a wider ‘Future Psychologists’ scheme.

    • My Interview

      • How would you describe yourself in 3 words?

        social media psychologist

        What did you want to be after you left school?

        I had no idea! I would have loved to be in theatre, but I really can't sing, dance or act, so that put an end to that idea!

        Were you ever in trouble at school?

        I was generally well-behaved, but I did get shouted at a few times!

        Who is your favourite singer or band?

        I love Ronan Keating and Taylor Swift.

        What's your favourite food?

        Anything with pasta

        If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!

        1) I'd wish I could time-travel so I could go back to the past. 2) That I could play the piano really really well. 3) I would probably wish for lots of money - but I'd share it out with lots of people!

        Tell us a joke.

        I ate a clock yesterday. It was time-consuming.

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