Designing places to have psychologically restorative soundscapes

We are delighted to announce our Speaker Dr Sarah Payne.

Abstract

Taking a trip around the world of soundscapes, psychological restoration, their integration and their importance, Sarah will discuss how the multisensorial experience of places impacts upon our health and wellbeing.

With a focus on her own research, including Project DeStress (Designing and Engineering Soundscapes to enable Restorative Environments for Sustainable Societies), the talk will explore how the impact of the built environment on people’s experiences and their restorative outcomes can be determined. Urban parks feature heavily, as does the role of nature, thus the talk will end by discussing the need to explore other environments, other sounds, and if a restorative soundscape can indeed be designed that is restorative for all.

Biography

In August 2022, Sarah joined the University of Surrey to become part of the Environmental Psychology Research Group, after having held an academic post (Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor) at Heriot-Watt University for eight years. Trained in Psychology (BSc Psychology, University of Sheffield; MSc Environmental Psychology, University of Surrey), her PhD Architecture (University of Manchester) crossed disciplinary boundaries incorporating environmental psychology and acoustics.

The interdisciplinary nature of Sarah’s research interests resulted in her subsequently working in acoustic departments (Research Fellow, University of Salford), information studies (PostDoctoral Research Fellow; McGill University, Canada), engineering departments (PostDoctoral Research Fellow, University of Warwick; Heriot-Watt University), and geography and planning institutes (Heriot-Watt University).