Dr Samantha Dockray is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Applied Psychology, University College Cork.  Her key interests relate to the application of psychobiological models to understand the development of patterns of behaviour and health.  Samantha has a particular interest in the health and wellbeing of people at periods of transition, such as adolescence and emerging adulthood, and during periods of stress, and her research emphasises the interplay of biological process, behavioural science and developmental trajectories of health and behaviour.  Samantha is interested in how technology can be used to explore the interplay of biology and behaviour during adolescence, and in how technology may be used to promote positive psychobiological health in adolescents.

Samantha’s work includes the measurement of emotions and biology in ecological settings, and her research examines how wearable technology enables this, including what individual and contextual factors influence how people engage with wearable technology for research, and how wearable technologies are used to identify specific emotions, and patterns of emotional arousal in ecological settings.