Dr Madeleine Pownall

Profile

I'm an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Leeds, where I research how we can make psychology, and higher education, more rigorous, inclusive, and meaningful. My work sits at the intersection of psychology education, open research, feminist psychology, and student experience, with a particular interest in how universities can better prepare students to create positive social change.

I teach across undergraduate and postgraduate psychology and am passionate about designing engaging, authentic learning experiences. My research explores how psychology should be taught, how students learn, and how universities can embed openness, sustainability, global citizenship, and inclusion into the curriculum. Alongside this, I work internationally to improve research methods training and promote more transparent and robust psychological science.

Alongside my educational research, I write about feminism, gender, and the history of psychology. I'm particularly interested in recovering the overlooked contributions of women to psychological science and exploring how feminist perspectives can strengthen both research and teaching. I am the coauthor of A Feminist Companion to Social Psychology (Open University Press, 2021), which won the British Psychological Society Textbook Award (2024) and co-editor of Teaching Open Science (Edward Elgar, 2026). My first popular science book, Absent Minds: The untold story of the women who changed psychology forever (Headline, 2026), tells the stories of women whose work has been left out of psychology's history.

I collaborate with colleagues across Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia, and currently hold appointments as Visiting Professor at Universitas Brawijaya (Indonesia) and Visiting Lecturer at the University of Adelaide (Australia). I serve as Director of Education and Pedagogy for the international Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training (FORRT), where I lead initiatives to improve psychology education worldwide through open scholarship. I'm also an Expert Panel Member for the American Psychological Association's Open Science Methodology Group, contribute to the British Psychological Society Open Science Advisory Group, and am a founding Executive Committee member of Qualitopia, a community for open qualitative researchers.

My research has helped shape national and international policy on psychology education and open research, including contributing to the British Psychological Society's accreditation standards, the American Psychological Association's undergraduate psychology guidelines, and UNESCO's work on open science. I regularly work with universities and professional organisations around the world to develop curricula, improve research training, and build more inclusive research cultures.

My work has been recognised through several national and international awards, including the University of Leeds Sustained Collaborative Excellence Teaching Award (2025), the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science Commendation Award (2025), the DART-P Higher Education Psychology Teacher of the Year Award (2023), and the Wilbert K. McKeachie Teaching Excellence Award (2021) from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology.

I enjoy sharing psychology beyond academia through public talks, media appearances, writing, podcasts, and collaborations with policymakers and professional bodies.

Current Postgraduate Researchers:
Idei Swasti (2023-2026): Evidence-based psychological interventions to promote Indonesian university students' self-regulated learning post-pandemic

Clare Copley (2022-2029): Exploring sex and gender differences in growing up with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD): Impact upon diagnosis, mental health and progression into Higher Education

Palupi Palupi (2024-2027): Muslim parents’ mediation of children’s internet use in Indonesia and their children’s perspective

Wahyu Jati Anggoro (2025-2029): The development of a situational judgement test to measure psychological literacy: assessing psychology graduates' employability

Ellen Frost (2024-2028): Centring LGBT+ women’s experiences of endometriosis: A critical mixed-methods analysis

Noor Aqsa (2024-2028): Mobilising students for disaster response in Indonesia: A psychological first aid education programme

Sharnel Wiggins (2024-2028): Decolonisation and the mental health of black students: A qualitative participatory exploration

Kirsty Leah (2024-2028): Exploration of wellbeing and belonging amongst female neurodivergent trainee clinical psychologists: A qualitative study

Responsibilities

• Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence Fellow (2022-2024)
• Welcome, Induction, and Transitions Academic Lead

Research interests

In my pedagogical research, I am interested in work which offers critical or creative ways of thinking about rigour, student engagement, student achievement, and success in Higher Education. I am a member of Research in the Psychology of Student Education (RitPOSE) Group at Leeds; with this group, I am currently involved in projects exploring undergraduate transitions, psychological literacy, and assessment and feedback.

More broadly, I am a critical feminist metascientist and psychologist and all of my work is through this lens. As part of this, I am interested in how psychological science can use teachings from feminist psychology to be more diverse, welcoming, inclusive, and critical. I also have an interest in feminist pedagogy and creative approaches to teaching and learning.

I am an advocate for open scholarship and try to embed this into my teaching and research. I am particularly interested in ongoing debates and discussions surrounding the future of open science. More recently, my work considers how open science can be more inclusive, including to diverse methodologies and different groups of academics, and how open science conversations can strive to be more constructive. I am particularly interested in advovating for appropiate standards of rigour for qualitative researchers.

Qualifications

• PhD in Social Psychology
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
• Psychology BSc (First Class Hons), University of Lincoln

Professional memberships

• Society for the Teaching of Psychology
• European Association of Social Psychology
• Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues
• The Psychology of Women and Equalities Section of the British Psychological Society
• Association of Women in Psychology
• APA Open Science and Methodology Expert Panel!
• Director of Education and Pedagogy; Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training

Student education

I teach across all levels of the undergraduate psychology curriculum, with particular interests in social psychology, research methods, feminist psychology, and the student experience. I lead PSYC3549: Feminist Social Psychology, where students explore psychology through feminist perspectives and complete authentic assessments including policy briefs and research proposals. I also teach on PSYC1036: Introduction to Research Skills and PSYC1037: Applied Research Skills, as well as across the School's core Research Skills curriculum, where I have helped redesign research methods teaching to embed open science, preregistration, and research integrity.

Current postgraduate researchers

• Noor Aqsa
• Ellen Frost