Brenda Lobb

Phone: +64 9 373 7599 ext 86870
Email: b.lobb@auckland.ac.nz
Room: HSB 637
Office hours: Please email for appointment

After gaining her PhD from The University of Auckland in 1976, Brenda established her own company and worked for many years as a psychological scientist, business analyst, writer, software developer and publisher in New Zealand and overseas. She returned to the university in 1996 on teaching contracts until her appointment in 2003. She serves on the editorial boards of several international journals and conferences and has served on national academic review and professional programme accreditation teams. Brenda holds a Distinguished Teaching Award. She has established, directed and taught multidisciplinary postgraduate teaching and research programmes in ergonomics and industrial, work and organisational psychology as well as teaching several undergraduate courses in these areas as well as research methods and general psychology.

Brenda’s main research interests are in the application of psychological science to the understanding of behaviour at work, including analyses of how human, machine and environmental factors both physical and psychosocial influence performance and wellbeing,  but the range of her recent work includes analyses of why people choose to risk their lives crossing railway tracks; the effectiveness of interventions to stop them; how farmers (and others) may be persuaded to comply with safety advice; occupational stress and wellbeing in forestry workers, chefs and police; how work fatigue can be defined and measured to help organisations manage it;  how personal characteristics affect individuals’ tolerance of shift work; how to help architects translate qualitative design requirements into technical specs; how belief in recovered memories may be influenced by prior knowledge and expert testimony; how you can get representative work samples to allow better calculation of hazard exposures of builders, chefs and school teachers, cost effectively; emotional intelligence and career success; how humans’ taste sensitivity changes with repeated testing;  how diagram fidelity in software design tools affects design productivity.

• LOBB, B.H., & WOODS, G. (2011). In search of a representative work sample in residential building. Applied Ergonomics. In press. 10.1016/j.apergo.2011.12.008..
• LOBB, B.H., ATKINSON, C., & IM, R. (2010). A systems approach to analysis of sheep farming accidents. Presented at International Congress of Applied Psychologists, Melbourne, Australia.
• LOBB, B.H. (2010). Reducing musculoskeletal discomfort in computer users: Evaluation of an inexpensive intervention. Presented at 27th International Congress of Applied Psychologists, Melbourne, Australia.
• LOBB, B.H. (2010). What can we do about work fatigue? Theoretical and methodological issues in research. Presented at Expert Workshop on Psychosocial Factors at Work, Darwin, Australia.
• LOBB, B., THOMSON, M.L., LUNT, A. (2009). What do you mean, “fatigue”? Proceedings of the 17th World Congress of the International Ergonomics Association, Beijing, China, 9-14 August.