Supervisors
Please click on the name of the supervisor to follow a link to their webpage and find out more about their research interests and potential areas of PhD supervision. We recommend contacting a potential supervisor with your research outline before submitting a formal application, please read our guidelines for writing your research outline first. Please only contact one supervisor. If another supervisor is better suited to your project, we will redirect your query.
Some supervisors have put forward ideas for potential PhD projects that they would be interested to supervise. These are listed below the name of the relevant supervisor. We also welcome original research proposals.
Dr Kazia Anderson
Research specialisms: career development and success; gender and occupational context; wellbeing at work; coaching and career interventions.
Self-funded project: Understanding the “blue-light” personality: An exploration of the socio-psychological characteristics and competencies of emergency services personnel in the UK
Professor Erica Bowen
Research specialisms: violence in intimate relationships; violence prevention; offender rehabilitation.
Professor Eleanor Bradley
Research specialisms: adult mental health; medicines conversations (information-exchange, concordance); family input and support (shared decision making, coproduction); non-medical prescribing; qualitative research. The application of health psychology theory to mental healthcare. Current projects include the input of families to shared decision making within adult mental healthcare, an exploration of the role of motivational interviewing as a resource for prescribing professionals to enhance communication within adult mental healthcare, and defining recovery within and between adult mental healthcare services.
Research methodologies: predominantly qualitative, with a particular interest in constructivist grounded theory.
Professor Dawn Brooker
Research specialisms: dementia studies; clinical psychology; ageing; the interface between the experience of those affected by dementia, practitioners and researchers to ensure real knowledge exchange. Practice development, complex care, psycho-social interventions in dementia care, observational methods, quality of life and quality of care
Research methodologies: predominantly mixed methods approaches.
Dr Sarah Davis
Research specialisms: Individual differences; emotional intelligence; child and adolescent development; personality; mental health; stress and coping; resilience; social cognition; attentional bias
Research methodologies: Longitudinal; experimental and cross-sectional research designs; psychometric validation; quantitative statistical methods including structural equation modelling and conditional process modelling (Mediation and moderation).
Self-funded project: Emotional intelligence in bipolar disorder
Dr Rosie Erol
Research specialisms: policing, crime reduction, violent crime, domestic abuse, vulnerability, health-related evaluations
Research methodologies: qualitative methods, mixed and multi-methods
Dr Derek Farrell
Research specialisms: psychological trauma; Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s); child sexual abuse; clergy sexual abuse; gender-based violence; trauma capacity building; psychological first aid; EMDR Therapy; cognitive behavioural psychotherapies, mental health & severe mental illness; performance enhancement in sport; psychological interventions within humanitarian assistance programmes; clinical supervision; positive psychology.
Research methodologies: interpretative phenomenological analysis; Q Methodology; Delphi Technique; mixed methodology; psychometric evaluation and validation including statistical analysis.
Dr Daniel Farrelly
Research specialisms: evolutionary perspectives on human behaviour, in particular social and cognitive psychology.
Research methodologies: quantitative, experimental.
Professor Elizabeth Gilchrist
Research specialisms: domestic abuse/intimate partner violence and factors associated with IPV; risk assessment - particularly with intimate partner violence; innovative interventions for intimate partner violence - again particularly with perpetrators; victim/survivors perspectives on intimate partner violence; sports interventions and desistance; international perspectives on risk, interventions and offending.
Dr Kath Gordon-Smith
Research specialisms: comorbidities (physical and psychiatric) of major mood disorders
Research methodologies: quantitative, longitudinal mood measures in bipolar disorder.
Self-funded project: Emotional intelligence in bipolar disorder
Self-funded project: Atopic diseases in bipolar disorder
Dr Amy Grubb
Research specialisms: police psychology; policing; hostage and crisis negotiation; conflict resolution; sexual violence; rape blame attribution; rape victimology; and medico-legal responses to rape victims.
Research methodologies: quantitative research methods; qualitative research methods; and mixed methods.
Self-funded project: Understanding the “blue-light” personality: An exploration of the socio-psychological characteristics and competencies of emergency services personnel in the UK
Dr Di Haigney
Research specialism: research methods and analytical techniques for data
Research methodologies: quantitative.
Dr Gillian Harrop
Research specialisms: violence and sexual violence; false allegations; domestic abuse; police investigation.
Self-funded project: Bystander Intervention
Matthew Jellis
Research specialisms: occupational/business psychology; personnel selection, assessment and training; organisational change and development.
Research methodologies: quantitative studies in applied settings, including the analysis of archive data; qualitative; mixed and multi-methods
Self-funded project:Physical Activity, Sedentary Behaviour and Health & Wellbeing
Professor Lisa Jones
Research specialisms: aetiology of major mood disorders (including bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis).
Research methodologies: quantitative, longitudinal measures in major mood disorders.
Self-funded project: Emotional intelligence in bipolar disorder
Self-funded project: Atopic diseases in bipolar disorder
Dr Tim Jones
Research specialisms: decision making; reasoning; intimate partner violence; LGBT+ domestic violence; environmental psychology (crowding, personal space and cognitive models).
Research methodologies: experimental, regression, mixed-methods.
Dr Béré Mahoney
Research specialisms: victimisation; the social and psychological costs of crime; sexuality and gender identity; eating behaviour; ageing and appearance concerns and beliefs about aging; individual differences.
Research methodologies: quantitative, including the analysis of ‘Big Data’; qualitative; mixed and multi-methods
Self-funded project: ‘Positive Higher Education’: The Role of Universities in Developing Character Strengths and Wellbeing
Self-funded project: Supporting the psychological needs of parents of newborn infants diagnosed with complex congenital heart disease, using a storytelling based intervention.
Dr Gabriela Misca
Research specialisms: developmental psychology and family diversity across the life-span; military and veterans psychology; military and veteran families: parenting, couple relationships, military trauma, mental health and PTSD; child and adolescent development and mental health in the context of diverse families and child-care settings: adoption, foster care, intercountry adoption, global surrogacy, same-sex parenting. Adverse early experiences, parenting, attachment and the intergenerational transmission of risk.
Research methodologies: quantitative (including longitudinal approaches to cohort data), qualitative (including narrative approaches) and mixed methods; participatory research methods with children and adults; systematic review approaches, and intervention evaluation.
Dr Blaire Morgan
Research specialisms: psycholinguistics, education, positive psychology, social psychology, moral education and virtue ethics.
Research methodologies: quantitative, mixed methods.
Self-funded project: ‘Positive Higher Education’: The Role of Universities in Developing Character Strengths and Wellbeing
Dr Kate Muse
Research specialisms: cognitive-behavioural interventions; mindfulness-based interventions; anxiety disorders (especially panic disorder and health anxiety); emotional mental imagery; therapist competence; therapist supervision and skills training.
Research methodologies: qualitative (interviews, IPA, thematic analysis, grounded theory), meta-synthesis, mixed-methods approaches, systematic reviews, scale development, case series, randomised controlled trials.
Dr Helen Nicholas
Research specialisms: counselling psychology, trauma, anxiety, older adults, neurodegenerative diseases (dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease), coaching psychology, ethical and professional issues in psychology.
Research methodologies: qualitative.
Dr Laura Rees-Davies
Research specialisms: eating disorders (Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa); psychology of coaching and mentoring; play, ICT and emotional development.
Research methodologies: qualitative methods, evidence-based practice.
Dr Helen Scott
Research specialisms: occupational psychology; empathy and emotional intelligence; resilience; training and development interventions to support employee psychological wellbeing.
Research methodologies: quantitative, mixed methods.
Self-funded project: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education
Dr Holly Taylor-Dunn
Research specialisms: policing; domestic and sexual violence; stalking and harassment.
Research methodologies: realistic evaluation, thematic analysis.
Self-funded project: Bystander Intervention
Dr Elaine Walklet
Research specialisms: relationships between physical and mental health, the psychological impact of illness and long-term conditions, behaviour change and adherence, self-management interventions, and stress in healthcare staff.
Research methodologies: qualitative, mixed methods.