Reneeta recently completed her PhD candidate in cross-cultural psychology at Victoria University of Wellington. Her research interests are rituals and culture, prosocial behaviour, group dynamics and industrial-organisational psychology. Her thesis investigated how rituals affect people socially and cognitively. Specifically, Reneeta used different methodologies to examine how synchronous movements (a specific element of rituals) have positive social outcomes on social cohesion and potentially detrimental negative outcomes on creative thinking. Reneeta is also an intercultural communication trainer and has experience working with several organisations in New Zealand.

Hazel completed her PhD. Ron was her secondary supervisor. People who experience chronic pain (pain lasting more than 6 months) experience trouble thinking. Hazel tested whether a bias in attention underlies some of these cognitive deficits. That is, whether pain experience motivates attention towards signals of pain and threat. Specifically, Hazel used cognitive psychology methods to test if there are different patterns in attention to visual stimuli related to pain and body tissue threat, in people experiencing chronic pain compared to controls.