Dr Rachel Zajac
Email rachelz@psy.otago.ac.nz
Tel 64 3 479 3988
Dr Rachel Zajac has been the sole PI on two Marsden Grants, and is also funded by FRST. She is a regular reviewer for law, psychology and policing journals, national and international funding bodies (e.g., National Science Foundation), and she serves on the Editorial Board of Applied Cognitive Psychology. She is frequently called on to advise New Zealand social workers, legal practitioners and policy makers on methods to interview children and adults. She is the Associate Director of the Innocence Project New Zealand, and is closely involved with the New Zealand Police, where she contributes to benchmarking practice, procedural review and training.
Her research has been used in police and judicial education programmes in the United Kingdom and Australia, and in the US Supreme Court as scientific evidence. She was recently profiled for the Association for Psychological Science’s Observer magazine as one of their ‘International Rising Stars’.
Rachel was appointed as a faculty member in 2003, after completing a PhD and a Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Psychology in the Department.
Teaching
Research Interests
- Eyewitness evidence
- Social influences on memory
- Psychological factors in the interpretation of forensic evidence