Sarah A. Walker

Sarah Walker is an Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology, and Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute and Institute for Data Science at Durham.

Sarah joined Durham University, School of Education in 2024 from the University of Sydney, Australia where she completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies in psychology, and worked as an academic member of staff.

Her research focuses on individual differences in self-informant agreement in psychological assessments, particularly examining response biases, self-knowledge, and perceptions of others. Specifically, Sarah's expertise lies in emotion regulation (both self- and other-directed), exploring how, and why individuals influence the emotions of others and its effect on intra- and interpersonal outcomes.

Sarah is interested in talking to prospective PhD students interested in the dynamic experience of emotion, with a particular emphasis on emotion regulation (intrinsic and extrinsic). Intrinsic regulation referring to how we regulate our own emotions, and extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation-how we influence the emotional experiences of others.

In particular, Sarah is interested in how these concepts play out within educational, social, and online contexts - from how self- and other-regulation impacts learning outcomes, influences motivation, and relationships with others.