Rate My Professor Mitchell Longstaff

Dr Mitchell Longstaff is a Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Psychology within the Faculty of Health at Southern Cross University, Australia, a position he has held since 2009. He earned his PhD in 2000 and BSc (Honours) from the University of Newcastle, Australia, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education from the University of Greenwich, United Kingdom. Longstaff is recognized as a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). Before joining Southern Cross University, he taught and conducted research at Arizona State University in the United States and the University of Greenwich in the United Kingdom. In addition to his lecturing duties, he chairs the Health Faculty Board and the Academic Board Appeals Committee.

Longstaff's research encompasses fundamental and applied aspects of cognition, including working memory, eyewitness memory, autobiographical memory, attention, and sex differences. He investigates discrete and dynamic motor control, psychomotor skills such as handwriting, drawing, and aiming movements, and the impact of factors like dual-task performance, neurological degradation, individual differences, anxiety, and evolutionary perspectives. This work has implications for education, child development, forensic science, ergonomics, and neurological assessment, grounded in cognitive and evolutionary psychology. Notable publications include "Space-time invariance in adult handwriting" (Longstaff & Heath, 1995, Australian Journal of Psychology), "Discrete and dynamic scaling of the size of continuous graphic movements of parkinsonian patients and elderly controls" (Longstaff et al., 2003, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry), "Effects of team affiliation on color-valence associations" (Forrester, Winskel, & Longstaff, 2024, Color Research & Application), and "The Effect of Colour on Processing and Perception of Emojis" (Forrester, Winskel, & Longstaff, 2023, Psychological Reports). He supervises postgraduate students in these areas and teaches courses such as Psychology Seminars, Learning and Memory, Introduction to Psychology I and II, and supervises Psychology Honours theses. His scholarly interests also include the philosophy of science, history of psychology, pedagogy, and epistemology. He serves as a registered peer reviewer for the Australasian Journal of Paramedicine.