A Personal Perspective on Doing Good Research Seminar Series – Prof William Hayward: How a Life in Hong Kong Shaped My Career as a Cognitive Scientist

The third session of the A Personal Perspective on Doing Research Seminar Series for the 2025/26 academic year, organised by the School of Graduate Studies of Lingnan University, was held on 26 November 2025. It featured a stimulating talk titled How a Life in Hong Kong Shaped My Career as a Cognitive Scientist presented by Prof William Hayward, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Chair Professor of Psychology, and was attended by about 70 faculty members and students. Prof Hayward has been very involved in Hong Kong for many years, and in his lecture, he discussed insights from his life here, sparking lively discussions among the audience.

A leading scholar in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, whose distinguished career spans New Zealand and Hong Kong, Prof Hayward examines how people interpret the world through visual information, particularly faces, objects, and shifts of visual attention. By combining behavioural measures with neural activity measured through electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking, he and his team provide valuable information on how the human brain processes visual stimuli.

Prof Hayward has received extensive substantial research funding through the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC), including 14 General Research Funds (GRFs) as Principal Investigator and a Strategic Topics Grant as Co-Principal Investigator. He was also awarded a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship Scheme in 2025/26 by the RGC. Complementing his research achievements, Prof Hayward contributes actively to the academic community as Associate Editor of the British Journal of Psychology and as a member of the RGC’s Humanities and Social Sciences Panel.