Kirin Hilliar was awarded a prize for Best Student Presentation at the recent Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (SARMAC) conference held in Kyoto, Japan, for her paper entitled “At the pub, they ALL look the same to me: Elimination of the own-race bias through alcohol intoxication”. Prizes were awarded on the basis of votes from other conference attendees, with Kirin receiving the highest number of votes.

Kirin is a current postgraduate student completing the combined PhD/M.Psychology (Forensic) degree, and is supervised by Dr Richard Kemp. Her research aims to uncover the perceptual and social mechanisms behind the own-race bias in face recognition. The own-race bias refers to the tendency for people to show better recognition memory for faces from their own racial group compared to faces from a different racial group. By understanding the mechanisms behind this bias, Kirin hopes to develop interventions that will reduce its magnitude and its negative effects on interracial interactions.