NI Science Festival presents Our Perfectly Imperfect Memories

This February, The Crescent is delighted to welcome NI Science Festival for a series of events and workshops as part of the 2026 programme.

We often think our impressions of the past remain preserved somewhere inside our brains. In fact, we reconstruct our memories every time we try to recall them. But a faulty memory isn’t always a bad thing… 

In this talk, psychologists Ciara Greene and Gillian Murphy explore the cutting-edge science of human memory, the ethical implications of memory manipulation and the pitfalls of false recollections. They reveal the surprising benefits of a flexible memory system, and explain why no two trips down memory lane are ever quite the same. 

Ciara Greene is associate professor in the School of Psychology at University College Dublin, where she leads the Attention and Memory Laboratory.

Gillian Murphy is associate professor in the School of Applied Psychology at University College Cork and a funded investigator at Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software.