A team of UCT researchers presented findings from two streams of research at the annual European Association of Psychology and Law (EAPL), held in Vilnius Lithuania. Post graduate students Milton Gering and Kyra Scott prepared presentations based on their work with Prof. Colin Tredoux who joined them at this high-profile conference.

The European Association of Psychology and Law (EAPL), founded in 1982, promotes the exchange between Psychology and Law, both in research and practice. The Annual Conference of the European Association and Law is organized each year in a different European city, and brings together researchers, practitioners, and other parties involved in legal settings. The aim of the Conference is to promote and improve new research, applied programs and legal procedures. The scientific program will be addressing the key issues in psychology and law. Different areas of forensic psychology and criminology were explored, such as forensic risk assessment and management, victims and offenders, biological and genetic bases of violence, investigative psychology, forensic and psychological assessment, criminal investigation, with a specific focus on technological advancements and application in legal psychology.

The UCT team presented on the effects of stress on witness memory and identifications as well as the use of generative adversarial networks (a powerful computing technique) in generating artificial faces from witness descriptions. Both talks were well received, with the conference organisers expressing thanks for the quality of the presentations and the long travel the South African team endured to present at this conference. These conference serve not only as a way of disseminating our research findings but as an important opportunity to increase UCT’s research network and make connections between local and international researchers.