Rate My Professor Lauren Shaw

Dr. Lauren Shaw is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Head of Psychology at James Cook University, where she provides leadership for the design, delivery, and development of psychology programs across Australia and Singapore. A highly regarded educator, she communicates complex ideas in clear, practical, and engaging ways, delivering high-quality, equitable learning experiences in social psychology, organisational psychology, research methods and statistics, ethics, and evidence-based practice. Her teaching emphasizes experiential and reflective learning, transferable skills, and real-world applications. She has led the development of flexible, student-focused fourth-year psychology programs nationwide, earning the 2025 JCU Excellence Award for Change and Innovation. Lauren has supervised more than 100 fourth-year research projects to completion and currently supervises two PhD candidates, one exploring factors contributing to post-traumatic growth in women survivors of intimate partner violence.

Lauren's research takes an interdisciplinary approach, applying psychology to education, health, organisational, and legal contexts. Current focuses include best practices in online education and student-educator dynamics, women's health with emphasis on psychological impacts of conditions like endometriosis and adenomyosis amid systemic gender biases, the intersection of psychology, law, and mental health, and leadership development. Key publications encompass her PhD thesis 'It's the thought that counts: developing a model of driver aggression by exploring the underlying cognitive processes' (2016); 'Sticks and Stones? Recognising and Optimally Responding to “eRage: A Growing Educational Challenge”' (2020, with Alicia Barker); 'Do you really want to hurt me?: Exploring the role of Narcissism, driver comparison and ego threat in driver aggression using a conceptual definition of aggression' (2023, with Penelope Mithen and Oliver Briant); and 'Adding Insult to Injustice: Exploring differences in the role of justice perceptions and social media use on vengeful dissent in online and on-campus education' (2024, with Nicole Hedge). Her career includes prior roles as eLearning Advisor at Swinburne Online (2021-2022), Assistant Course Coordinator and Lecturer at Monash University (2017-2022), Lecturer and Corporate Educator at Queensland University of Technology (2019-2021), and Research Assistant at QUT's Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety-Queensland (2011-2017). She has presented research on media outlets including The Project, Channel 7 News, and ABC radio.