I am a Lecturer in Social Psychology at Lancaster University and member of the Society for the Psychology of Human-Animal Intergroup Relations (PHAIR). My expertise lies in social and moral psychology, as well as computational methods and natural language processing. I received my BSc in Psychology from the University of York, and MSc and PhD in Psychology from the University of Kent.

You can contact me at s.leach1@lancaster.ac.uk.

My work seeks to understand the boundaries we set around individuals and groups that we consider deserving of moral consideration–our moral circles. I study this because a more expansive moral circle has the potential to lead to greater empathy and altruism, as well as more inclusive and equitable societies.

I take a broad and interdisciplinary approach to my work, using experiments and large-scale computational methods to understand how we, as individuals and societies, consider outgroups, animals, and the environment. My work can be found in peer-reviewed journals such as: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Cognition, British Journal of Psychology, and Social Personality and Psychological Science.