Face Value: What Your Nose Knows about Stress with Prof Gillian Forrester

Face Value: What Your Nose Knows about Stress with Prof Gillian Forrester, at 7:30pm on Wednesday 10th September 2025, Wagner Hall, West Street, Brighton

*** Please note that, starting from May 2025, our talks will start at 7:30pm. ***

Title: Face Value: What Your Nose Knows about Stress

Outline of Talk: Investigating how we feel is a tricky topic because our psychological state is a combination of our sensory and subjective experiences. Scientists often use survey and biological measures, like heart rate, to understand how we react to stress. But we’re not very good at knowing how we feel – and the act of taking a measurement, like blood pressure, can cause its own stress response. Thermal imaging is emerging as a powerful tool to detect our body’s response to stress in real time without contact and in natural settings. This is a scientific game-changer allowing a window into the psychological wellbeing of not only us but also our non-human great ape cousins.

Biography: I am a professor of psychology at the University of Sussex. I collaborate with chimpanzees, gorillas, and babies to better understand how brains and behaviours evolve and develop over time. By studying both human and non-human primates, I am on a quest to better understand how we became upright-walking, talking, tool-using great apes. I am dedicated to science engagement and accessibility. I founded the Me, Human outreach project and am the Principal Curator of Science Futures at Glastonbury Festival. I make regular contributions to television, radio, newsprint, and podcasts. Look out for the new BBC 2 Horizon programme ‘Secrets of the Brain’ - airing 15thand 22nd September 2025.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillian_Forrester
https://gillianforrester.com/wordpress/
https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p170236-gillian-forrester

Venue: The Wagner Hall, West Street, Brighton is adjacent to the Bright Helm pub, where cars enter the Orange Car Park of Churchill Square Shopping Centre.

Timing: Doors and bar open at 7:00pm. Talk starts at 7:30pm. Short break 8:15 approx, before Q&A. Event ends 8:45 approx.