Rate My Professor Peggy St. Jacques

Peggy L. St. Jacques is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta, Faculty of Science. She earned an Honours BSc in Psychology from the University of Toronto, a PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience from Duke University, and completed an NRSA-funded postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. Prior to her current position, she served as a Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex, where she established the Memory for Events Lab in 2015, relocating it to the University of Alberta in 2018. She has been recognized as an Association for Psychological Science Rising Star and elected to the Memory Disorders Research Society. In 2021, she received the Canada Research Chair Tier 2 award, and in 2022, she was awarded the Sloan Research Fellowship in Neuroscience for her outstanding early-career contributions.

Dr. St. Jacques directs the Memory for Events Lab, investigating the cognitive and neural mechanisms supporting memory for complex real-world events, including autobiographical experiences and those encoded in controlled settings using immersive virtual reality and wearable cameras. Her research examines how retrieval modifies long-term memory representations, the influence of visual perspective on encoding and retrieval, age-related changes in memory, emotional effects, and implications for conditions like dementia and post-traumatic stress disorder. She employs behavioral methods, fMRI, and ecologically valid paradigms. Key publications include St. Jacques et al. (2011) on wearable camera technology for investigating real-world events; St. Jacques and Schacter (2013) on memory reactivation modifying future memories; Iriye and St. Jacques (2021) on visual perspectives in virtual reality influencing memory; and St. Jacques (2024) on visual perspective shifts affecting autobiographical remembering with applications to legal contexts. In October 2024, she delivered the Zangwill Club Lecture at the University of Cambridge on visual perspective biases in autobiographical memory. Her work advances understanding of memory construction, updating, enhancement, and distortion, with impacts on emotional regulation and clinical applications.