I am a research clinical psychologist: I did my research training (PhD) at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, and my clinical training (DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. 

As a clinical academic, my research overlaps with my work as a mental health professional, and involves: 

• Testing the efficacy of psychological therapies for mental and physical health conditions in RCTs
• Developing Acceptance & Commitment Therapy interventions and measures for use with mental and physical health conditions
• Exploring new assessment and treatment methods for neurological conditions - largely functional neurological disorders

Most of my teaching is on the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology, where I am Academic Director, but I teach across clinically-relevant masters courses and the UG programme. The main topics I cover are:

• Acceptance & Commitment Therapy
• Psychological Assessment and Formulation
• Clinical application of psychometrics
• Basic psychotherapy skills
• Viva skills

 My main ongoing funded research projects:

• Developing and feasibility testing an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) interventION for improving medication-taking behaviour in women with early stage invasive breast cancer: The ACTION trial. Yorkshire Cancer Research (01.06.18 – 01.06.2021)

• COMMEND: A randomized-controlled trial of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for improving QoL in motor neuron disease. NIHR HTA award (01.01.2018- 2023)

• FRESH STarT. A new approach to assessing self-harm in mental health contexts. NIHR Programme grant (01.06.2018 – 2023)

Recently, completed (in the last 2 years) funded research projects include: 

• ACTMUS: A pilot randomized-controlled trial of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for people with muscle disorders NIHR Research for Patient Benefit: (01.02.16 – 01.06.18)

• Effectiveness of a psychological intervention (ACT) on improving wellbeing in healthcare professionals. NHS Leeds West Clinical Commissioning Group. (01.10.17- 01.10. 2020)

• Creating an evidence-based toolbox for targeted public health interventions during COVID-19: a cross-border analysis to disentangle psychological, behavioural, media and governmental responses. Health Research Board (01.05.2020- 01.12.2020)