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We are fulltime faculty members in the University of Waterloo’s Department of Psychology who have a shared interest in understanding the development and persistence of anxiety problems. Currently, the Anxiety Studies Division includes Dr. Christine Purdon and Dr. David Moscovitch, the graduate students they supervise, and the research assistants who work for them.
Dr. Christine Purdon is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo and is the Executive Director of the Centre for Mental Health Research (CMHR).
Dr. David Moscovitch is an Associate Professor and holds the Canada Research Chair in Mental Health Research in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo.
Graduate Researchers
Drs. Purdon and Moscovitch supervise the research of MA/PhD students who have completed their 4-year undergraduate honours degrees in psychology and are receiving specialized training in research and treatment of psychological problems.
Dan Balk is a UW graduate student in clinical psychology investigating thinking styles and strategies that may help or hinder socially anxious individuals' abilities to view themselves and their social experiences in more positive or negative ways. His current study examines the emotional and behavioural impact of recalling and mentally imagining personal anxiety-provoking events from a first- or third-person perspective.
Tatiana (Tania) Bielak is a UW graduate student in clinical psychology who studies the effect of social anxiety on memory. In particular, she is interested in the way socially anxious people remember the people they interact with, whether these memories are true or biased
representations of these interactions, and whether certain types of interactions are better remembered by socially anxious individuals than are others.
Bianca Bucarelli is a UW graduate student in clinical psychology examining the impact of repeated actions on attention, memory, and other cognitive processes in order to understand how factors beyond anxiety are involved in the persistence of compulsive rituals, such as checking and washing. More broadly, she is interested in how these factors relate to the chronic doubt experienced by individuals with OCD and the role they play in the persistence of the disorder.
Brenda Chiang is a UW graduate student in clinical psychology
currently exploring the role that fear of guilt may play in perseveration and the persistence of compulsions. She is particularly interested in how decision-making styles may be affected by concerns about being held culpable for a negative outcome.
Dubravka Gavric is a UW graduate student in clinical psychology investigating the characteristics and functions of repetitive thought in social anxiety disorder. More specifically, she is interested in how repetitive thinking about prior social events impacts one’s confidence in their memory for these events.
Colleen Merrifield is a UW graduate student in clinical psychology whose anxiety research focuses on differentiating the self-conscious emotions of embarrassment and shame in order to better understand their role in the experience of social anxiety. She uses a variety of methods (mood induction, physiological monitoring, and self-reports) to investigate this question.
Andrea Nelson is a UW graduate student in clinical psychology who is interested in understanding how emotional states influence the way we think and inversely, how the way we think contributes to emotions and psychological distress. Her current research examines associations between anxiety and attention. Specifically, how does anxiety influence attention when one is faced with threat-related material over time and how does one’s ability to control attention impact one’s anxiety?
Research Assistants
We also hire research assistants (RAs) to help with intake and administration. They are carefully selected and well trained to ensure that they operate in accordance with standards for professional conduct. Their work is overseen by the graduate researchers and by Drs. Purdon and Moscovitch.
Julia Lee is our Anxiety Studies Division project coordinator.
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