Dr. Ionela Bara

Dr. Ionela Bara is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Professorship for Social Brain Sciences. Her research uses behavioral and neuroimaging methods to investigate the cognitive and neural mechanisms supporting aesthetic experience and our engagement with art.

Ionela completed a BA in History of Art at Babes-Bolyai University (Cluj-Napoca, Romania) and a MA in Art Image Studies at Bucharest University (Romania). Interested in exploring the aesthetic experience beyond the realm of humanities, she also completed a BSc in Psychology and a MSc in Psychological Research at Bangor University (Bangor, UK), followed by an ESRC-funded PhD at Bangor University under the supervision of Dr. Richard Ramsey. In her PhD research, Ionela investigated the role of domain-general executive resources across aesthetic and non-aesthetic judgments, and the impact of art knowledge training on aesthetic judgments and on executive functions that support learning and the generalisation of learning to new contexts.

In her free time, Ionela enjoys visiting museums, reading, and traveling.