Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death globally (Source: WHO), with psychological stress an established risk factor in its development (Source: AMH). My research focuses on uncovering the physiological pathways that link psychological stress to the development of cardiovascular disease. My research programme can be summarised under two research questions; what are the 1) social and 2) personality factors that influence how individuals physiologically respond to stress? Spanning all my work is the expansion and refining of the `reactivity hypothesis'; a key theory in health psychology. My work has extended the reactivity hypothesis to propose a new research paradigm which has been adopted by a number of laboratories internationally. 

Siobhán Howard completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies in the School of Psychology, National University of Ireland, Galway (now University of Galway), graduating with her PhD in 2008. Since then, Siobhán has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Galway (2008-2011), lecturer in psychology at the Department of Psychology at Mary Immaculate College (2011-2017), and currently works at UL as Associate Professor A (Senior Lecturer) in Psychology in the Department of Psychology (2017 to present) and Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs to the Faculty of Education and Health Sciences (2022 to present), at the University of Limerick.

Dr Howard is the past holder of an Irish Research Council New Horizons Research Project Award, a Royal Irish Academy Charlemont Award, and in 2015 and was joint National Co-Ordinator of the European Social Survey in Ireland (with Dr Brendan O Keeffe, Mary Immaculate College) from 2016-2018. She is currently the holder of a research award from the Bial Foundation to look at how psychological (in)flexibility may influence our ability to adapt to recurrent stress.

Dr Howard's novel work examining patterns of cardiovascular response habituation to psychological stress has impacted health psychology significantly; it has been instrumental in explaining some contradictory findings in stress psychology research and her work is cited internationally.