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Dr Glenn Williams

Assistant Professor

School: Psychology

I graduated from Northumbria University in 2011 and 2012, obtaining my BSc (Hons) Psychology and MRes Language & Cognition degrees respectively. In 2016 I graduated with a PhD in Psychology at the University of Dundee under the supervision of Dr. Yuki Kamide.

Following this, I worked as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow on a Leverhulme funded grant with Prof Vera Kempe at Abertay University exploring the impact of dialect on literacy acquisition. I was then appointed as Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Sunderland in 2019 before I returned to Northumbria University as Assistant Professor in Psychology in 2022.

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

My research interests are centred on language processing and literacy acquisition. I'm exploring how we represent (spatial) events as discourse unfolds, and how this influences the accessibility of discourse referents during processing. I'm also interested in how exposure to a dialect influences literacy acquisition, language comprehension, and production.

Key Publications

Control processes of cross- and within-language interference-A replication of Liu et al. (2019)., Williams, G., Kirk, N., Sánchez, L., Afshar, Z., Wen, Y., Declerck, M. 1 Nov 2025, In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition
Facilitators and barriers to engaging in expressive writing among health and social care professionals, Smith, M., Hoult, L., Rippon, D., O’Brien, N., Branley-Bell, D., Byrne-Davis, L., Collins, C., Gallagher, S., Kinman, G., Mark, A., O’Connor, D., Vedhara, K., Williams, G., Wetherell, M. 25 Aug 2025, In: PLoS One
Measuring the semantic priming effect across many languages, Buchanan, E., Cuccolo, K., Heyman, T., van Berkel, N., Coles, N., Iyer, A., Peters, K., van 't Veer, A., Montefinese, M., Maxwell, N., Taylor, J., Valentine, K., Arriaga, P., Barzykowski, K., Boucher, L., Collins, W., Vaidis, D., Aczel, B., Al-Hoorie, A., Ambrosini, E., Besson, T., Burin, D., Butt, M., Clarke, A., Daryani, Y., El-Dakhs, D., Elsherif, M., Fernández-López, M., Ferreira, P., Freitag, R., Gattei, C., Godbersen, H., Grim, P., Halama, P., Havan, P., Irrazabal, N., Isloi, C., Iversen, R., Julliard, Y., Karaaslan, A., Kohút, M., Kohútová, V., Kos, J., Kosachenko, A., Lima, T., Mak, M., Manouilidou, C., Marciaga, L., Melinna, X., Miranda, J., Morvinski, C., Muppoor, A., Müjdeci, F., Nielsen, Y., Oliveros, J., Onič, J., Papadatou-Pastou, M., Patel, I., Pavlović, Z., Pažon, B., Pfuhl, G., Pronizius, E., Roettger, T., Ronderos, C., Ruiz-Fernandez, S., Senderecka, M., Solak, Ç., Stückler, A., Szekely-Copîndean, R., Taboh, A., Thériault, R., Tran, U., Trecca, F., Ulloa, J., Varga, M., Verheyen, S., Vesić Pavlović, T., Viviani, G., Wang, N., Zivna, K., Yun, C., Clark, O., Acar, O., Adamkovič, M., Agnoletti, G., Akil, A., Alsuhaibani, Z., Amenta, S., Ananyeva, O., Andreychik, M., Angele, B., Arias Quiñones, D., Arinze, N., Askelund, A., Baker, B., Baskin, E., Batalha, L., Batres, C., Beato, M., Becker, M., Becker, M., Behnke, M., Blaison, C., Borghi, A., Brandstätter, E., Buczny, J., Budak, N., Cabana, Á., Cai, Z., Canessa, E., Cavdan, M., Cecchetti, L., Chaigneau, S., Chang, F., Chartier, C., Chen, S., Cherniaeva, E., Christiansen, M., Chuan-Peng, H., Chwiłkowska, P., Comesaña, M., Cong, C., Cowan, C., Dandeneau, S., David, O., Davis, W., Demirag Burak, E., Dixson, B., Du, H., Duclos, R., Duyck, W., Efimova, L., Egan, C., Era, V., Evans, T., Exner, A., Feldman, G., Fellnhofer, K., Fini, C., Fisher, S., Flowe, H., Garrido-Vásquez, P., Gatti, D., Geller, J., Giannouli, V., Gorokhova, A., Griener, L., Grigoryev, D., Grossmann, I., Ghasemi, H., Handjaras, G., Hauspie, C., He, Z., Heilman, R., Heydari, A., Hine, A., Hoyer, K., Hryniszak, W., Hsiao, J., Huang, G., Ihaya, K., Ilczuk, E., Ishii, T., Dumbravă, A., Jankowiak, K., Jiang, X., Johnson, D., Jończyk, R., Järvikivi, J., Kaczer, L., Kamermans, K., Karl, J., Karner, A., Kačmár, P., Keech, J., Kim, M., Korbmacher, M., Kostorz, K., Kowal, M., Kratochvil, T., Kunisato, Y., Kuzminska, A., Körtvélyessy, L., Köse, F., Köster, M., Kękuś, M., Labusch, M., Lamm, C., Lau, C., Laurino, J., Law, W., Lettieri, G., Levitan, C., Lu, J., MacPherson, S., Malinakova, K., Manriquez-Robles, D., Marchant, N., Marelli, M., Martínez, M., Matthews, M., Mattiassi, A., Mattoli-Sánchez, J., Mazzuca, C., McGovern, D., Meier, Z., Melinscak, F., Misiak, M., Monteiro, L., Moreau, D., Moreno, S., Mulgrew, K., Muller, D., Nagy, T., Naranowicz, M., Ndukaihe, I., Neta, M., Novak, L., Ogbonnaya, C., Paek, J., Paltoglou, A., Parada, F., Parker, A., Paruzel-Czachura, M., Pavlov, Y., Paydarfard, S., Pegler, D., Peker, M., Perea, M., Pfattheicher, S., Protzko, J., Prusova, I., Pypno-Blajda, K., Qiu, Z., Reips, U., Ribeiro, G., Rinaldi, L., Roberts, S., Roembke, T., Romanova, M., Ross, R., Röer, J., Rızaoğlu, F., Saari, T., Sampaolo, E., Santos, A., Sarıçiçek, F., Sasaki, K., Scharnowski, F., Schmidt, K., Sepehri, A., Serçe, H., Sevincer, A., Siew, C., Simonetti, M., Sirota, M., Sorokowska, A., Sorokowski, P., Stephen, I., Stevens, L., Stewart, S., Steyrl, D., Stieger, S., Studzinska, A., Suarez, M., Szala, A., Szmalec, A., Sznycer, D., Szumowska, E., Söylemez, S., Söylemez, B., Takashima, K., Tamnes, C., Tan, J., Tang, C., Tavel, P., Tejada, J., Thompson, B., Tiernan, J., Torres-Muñoz, V., Touloumakos, A., Trémolière, B., Tschense, M., Türkan, B., Vadillo, M., Vannucci, C., Varnum, M., Vasilev, M., Vaughn, L., Verkampt, F., Villar, L., Wallot, S., Wang, L., Wang, K., Williams, G., Willinger, D., Wolfe, K., Wormley, A., Yamada, Y., Yang, Y., Zhou, Y., Zhang, M., Zheng, W., Zheng, Y., Zhou, C., Zidkova, R., Zumbrunn, N., Çoker, O., Çoksan, S., Öner, S., Özdoğru, A., Şahin, S., Kasanov, D., Arvanitis, A., Brick, C., Colloff, M., Gallyamova, A., Koch, C., Ropovik, I., Zhang, Y., Zhou, X., Patel, S., Suchow, J., Lewis, S. 24 Sep 2025, In: Nature Human Behaviour
Assessing the psychobiological demands of high-fidelity training in pre-hospital emergency medicine, Wetherell, M., Williams, G., Doran, J. 9 Oct 2024, In: Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine
Time spent playing video games during periods of isolation has no effect on loneliness or mental health, Hodgetts, S., Butler, J., Williams, G. 2 Oct 2024, In: Behaviour and Information Technology
Uncovering the social determinants of brain injury rehabilitation, Dunne, S., Williams, G., Bradbury, C., Keyes, T., Lane, A., Yang, K., Ellison, A. 1 Sep 2023, In: Journal of Health Psychology
Adverse effects of loneliness but no effect of gaming on mental health in gamers during three UK COVID-19 lockdowns, Hodgetts, S., Williams, G., Butler, J. 18 Feb 2022
Exposure to dialect variation in an artificial language prior to literacy training impairs reading of words with competing variants but does not affect decoding skills, Williams, G., Panayotov, N., Kempe, V. 1 Dec 2022, In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
Uncovering the social determinants of brain injury rehabilitation, Dunne, S., Williams, G., Bradbury, C., Keyes, T., Lane, A., Yang, K., Ellison, A. 25 Jul 2022
How does dialect exposure affect learning to read and spell? An artificial orthography study, Williams, G., Panayotov, N., Kempe, V. 1 Dec 2020, In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

PGR Supervision

Mat Cieśla Decoding dialect density and dialect effects on literacy and reading in children and adults. Start Date: 01/10/2023

Further Information

You can read more about me and my work at

Qualifications

Psychology PhD June 30 2016
Education PGCert
Linguistics MRes
Psychology BSc (Hons)

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