Key details
Natasha NLM Lawlor-Morrison
PhD Candidate
Natasha Morrison studied for a BSc Hons in Psychology (2012-2016) and a Msc in Psychological Research Methods and Advanced Statistics (2016-2017) at the University of Exeter. Her interests then focused primarily on cognitive psychology and addiction.
Under the supervision of Prof. Lee Hogarth she completed her undergraduate dissertation entitled 'How the effects of mood priming on alcohol choice varies as a function of individual differences' which she presented at the BPS South West Undergraduate Conference in 2015. Her MSc dissertation, 'Can smoking-specific go/no-go training reduce cigarette consumption, liking and craving? A feasibility experiment', was supervised by Dr Natalia Lawrence.
During this time, Natasha also acted as president of the University of Exeter's Meditation Society, a student Leader in the 2016 Grand Challenges project (Digital Futures) and a peer mentor in Biological Psychology.
Prior to commencing at the University of Greenwich, Natasha co-founded a CQC regulated residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre.
As of January 2020, Natasha is working on a MPhil/PhD in Human Resources and Organisational Behaviour at the University of Greenwich, under the supervision of Dr Nicoletta Dimitrova and Prof. Sian Moore under the title, 'Measuring and Developing employee's Learning Agility'.
Awards
- 2012 Recipient of the Leatherhead Community Association Award – a local award given to students with excellent grades to help fund university.
- 2020 Recipient of the University of Greenwich Vice Chancellor Scholarship
Recognition
A graduate member of the British Psychology Society (MBPsS) until 2018.
Research / Scholarly interests
Natasha Morrison is currently working on research into learning agility; exploring outcomes associated with learning agility, improving the measurement of learning agility and developing interventions to improve learning agility.
Natasha hopes that her research will result in useable tools and interventions to help people improve their lives by being better able to gain lessons from experience and to apply them in new and creative ways.
Natasha's overarching research interests have been exploring ways to reduce disadvantages experienced by some individuals; whether that be by helping people recover from addiction, increasing their resilience, improving their mood or by helping them to enhance their learning agility.
Key funded projects
Covid-19, learning agility, resilience and work performance: when does learning agility have the greatest impact? (working title).
Learning agility is typically associated with improved work performance however the mechanisms of why this is remaining unexplored. In addition, whilst learning agility is theoretically linked to resilience, there is little empirical basis for this claim. This longitudinal research project has been collecting data from working UK employees at various timepoints throughout the UK pandemic from May 2020 and is still ongoing. It attempts to explore whether learning agility measured at the start of the lockdown can predict later resilience and work performance and aims to explore the potential moderators of this relationship. Preliminary results suggest that learning agility does predict resilience and work performance. The effect of learning agility on resilience is greatest when work or personal factors are suboptimal; i.e. for those with low supervisor support, low trust in leadership, low cohesion at work, high politicking, low extraversion or high neuroticism. The results also suggest that for those staying at their job because they feel they have no other choice (continuance commitment), those with low learning agility experience a detriment to their resilience whereas those high in learning agility experience enhanced resilience. Problem-focused coping appears to magnify the effect of learning agility on resilience.
By highlighting the important benefits of learning agility in the workplace, this research will help to inform the need both for improved measurement of learning agility and for an intervention to improve learning agility.