Ms Maryanne Brassil

Post-Doctoral Research Officer
Law

About

Maryanne is a Postdoctoral Research Officer working on the UKRI-funded TRUE project led by Professor Yvonne McDermott Rees, investigating the impact of deepfakes and AI-generated media on perceptions of credibility on user-generated evidence in accountability processes for human rights violations.

Her work on this project so far is focused on investigating how exposure to and knowledge of deepfakes might impact trust in audiovisual media, as well as how judicial warnings may influence juror evaluations of user-generated evidence.

Maryanne is an experimental psychologist. She conducted her PhD research, supported by an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship, at the Attention and Memory Laboratory at University College Dublin (2020 – 2024). Her thesis explored the cognitive mechanisms that underpin eyewitness susceptibility to misinformation. In particular, she investigated the contribution of individual differences of cognitive abilities in this context, using a systematic review and online and laboratory experimental studies. Prior to her PhD studies, Maryanne completed a BA (Hons) in Psychology at University College Dublin (2017 – 2020).

Areas Of Expertise

  • Eyewitness memory accuracy
  • Misinformation
  • Working memory
  • Episodic memory
  • Experimental research design

Career Highlights

Research

Maryanne has conducted several experiments investigating the role of perceptual, attentional, and working memory factors in protecting against misinformation distortions to memory in eyewitness contexts. She has also collaborated on various projects exploring the broader impact of misinformation on judgments, beliefs, and behaviours, including the influences of fake news exposure and conspiracy theories.

Maryanne is particularly passionate about improving the ecological validity of methodologies used in misinformation research, so that we can gain more direct insights into how misinformation is perceived and processed in the real world.