Dr Longstaff will present on factors that have been found to influence the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.

Dr Mitchell Longstaff completed his PhD at the University of Newcastle, Australia, investigating the motor control of psychomotor skills such as handwriting and drawing, and their use as a clinical diagnostic tool. Participants included healthy adults and people with multiple sclerosis, and analysis tools included nonlinear dynamic analysis. During this time he became interested in handwriting in a forensic setting, such as in forensic document examination. As he was nearing the completion of his PhD in 1999, Dr Longstaff was invited to take up a position as a postdoctoral research associate in the motor control lab of Professor George Stelmach, at Arizona State University, USA. Dr Longstaff worked in this lab from 2000 to 2003, extending his research to people with Parkinson's disease and adding aiming movements as a task of interest.

Dr Longstaff next took up a position as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Greenwich, London, United Kingdom. Here he established himself as the subject lead for cognitive psychology, developing units of study with a strong empirical basis. He continued his research on psychomotor and aiming skills, and expanded this to include the influence of perceptual information, as well as work on verbal working memory. He applied his knowledge of cognitive psychology in a forensic setting to the teaching of criminology students and began supervising student projects on the topic of eyewitness memory.

In 2009 Dr Longstaff moved to Southern Cross University where he is building on the research and teaching he previously established. His presentation will detail some of the witness testimony research that he has been involved in since he has been at SCU

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