Amy Dawel

Associate Professor Amy Dawel is a cognitive and clinical psychologist at The Australian National University, where she leads the ANU Emotions and Faces Lab. Her research focuses on the psychology of face perception and emotional expression, examining how these processes underpin human interaction and wellbeing. A current focus is the challenge of synthetic media, investigating how people detect and respond to AI-generated personas. Her work reveals why people are misled by deepfakes and how specialist training and human-machine collaboration can enhance detection. This line of research has attracted international attention, with coverage in outlets such as The New York Times and National Geographic.