Briana Kennedy is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychological Science at the University of Western Australia, a position she has held since 2020. She serves as director of the PECAN (Perception, Emotion, Cognition, Ageing, and Neuroscience) Lab. Kennedy earned her PhD in Cognitive Psychology from UNSW Sydney under the supervision of Steve Most, where her research focused on emotion-attention interactions, including emotion-induced blindness. Following her doctorate, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California with Mara Mather. During this fellowship, she received the NIH/NIA F32 Postdoctoral National Research Service Award to study how age influences emotion and attention, particularly the positivity effect, whereby older adults prioritize positive over negative information.

Her research investigates how information is prioritized for conscious experience, with a core focus on how emotionally powerful stimuli capture attention and memory in the presence of competing information. Current projects explore emotion-cognition interactions, age-related changes including the positivity effect, individual differences in attentional biases related to social media use, eating behaviors, and body image, the impact of arousal on cognition, and associated neural mechanisms. Kennedy employs behavioral paradigms, eye-tracking, and neuroscience techniques. In addition to her research, she teaches across various psychological science courses and has been recognized with multiple teaching awards from the School and University levels, including the 2023 UWA Excellence in Teaching Award. She holds leadership roles such as Director of the School of Psychological Science Engagement and Impact Committee and member of the Executive Committee. Key publications include "Age differences in rapid attention to emotional stimuli are driven more by valence than by discrete emotions" (Fox, Mather, & Kennedy, Emotion, 2026), "The Role of Exposure Time on the Subjective Ratings of Emotional Images in Younger and Older Adults" (Kennedy et al., Affective Science, 2025), "The thighs have it: evidence for the importance of lower body regions in female body size judgments" (Marinko et al., BMC Biology, 2025), and "Negative images, regardless of task relevance, distract younger more than older adults" (Kennedy, Psychology and Aging, 2024).

Professional Email: briana.kennedy@uwa.edu.au