Dr. Lorena Arnal

Biography

I am a cognitive, educational and experimental psychologist broadly interested in (reading and) visual narratives comprehension, and recently interested in the development of serious games and game-based learning (GBL), together with new ways of teaching in HE.

I earned an International PhD Cum Laude in an Excelence Seal Doctoral Programme at UAM.

I graduated with Honours in Highschool. Then I studied the BSc in Psychology at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), where I graduated First Class Honours (ranking 3rd position in my promotion), and an MSc Degree in Methodology for Health and Behavioural Sciences taught between UAM, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) and Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM).

I developed my PhD with an FPI grant funded by UAM in the field of visual narratives, reading/viewing comprehension and eye-tracking. I have wide knowledge in these areas and also in statistics, data analysis, research design and methods, and other methodological topics.

I have experience in researching and teaching at the University, and I have worked for six months at Brain & Education Lab., at Leiden University (The Netherlands) as PhD Researcher, for six months as a Postdoctoral Research Technician at UAM in a nationally funded project, and for two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow Researcher at the Nottingham-Trent University (UK), with a Margarita Salas grant, a competitive grant under the "Next Generation EU" European funding.

Among my teaching experience, I have worked at UAM, UNED-Girona, Universidad Isabel I de Castilla and UNIR (Spain), and I have also taught for a PIR Academy, Adelante Formación en Psicología Clínica, in Spain, having recently earned a post as Associate Teacher at UL.

I was awarded with the Rafael Burgaleta Award from Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos (COP) de Madrid for developing an open-ended evaluation system for Schools, and several different grants along my pre and postdoctoral career.

At the moment, I am diving into teaching innovation, driven by my interest in serious games, GBL, gamification, transmedia narrative, alternate reality games, and new ways of teaching and assessing, which I am sure will bring in the near future a fresh whole new way of seeing teaching in Higher Education.