Profile

I am a psychologist based on the east coast of Scotland. Although I lived in other places for a while, I kept on coming back!

When I finished school I didn’t really know what I wanted to do but was interested in psychology so went to St Andrews University (at the same time as Kate and Wills!) to do a degree in it. After I finished, I still wasn’t sure what to do for a career so went to London to train to be a Makeup Artist (it’s amazing how much cross-over there is between psychology and makeup 😉 ). I ended up working in fashion for a few years but realised I wanted to be a bit more challenged. I came back to Scotland and did a Masters degree in Research Methods which led on to a PhD in Psychology. I’m so glad I did this as it lets me do all the things I love – I get to work with and help people, investigating different ways to improve their lives.

I have just finished my PhD so am currently working as a researcher. This work involves coming up with an idea to investigate, then planning, organising and running the investigation, collecting and analysing the data, and then writing up the results and presenting them to audiences.

My main research investigated whether teenagers’ social relationships influenced their health and behaviour. I did this by giving questionnaires to high school students (collecting information about their mental health, physical wellbeing, and health behaviours, as well as how attached they felt to various groups including their family, school and friends). I analysed this data using a statistics programme, and found that feeling attached to all these groups was linked to better psychological wellbeing. Feeling attached to the family and school was linked to better physical health and healthier behaviour, but attachment to friends predicted worse health behaviour (maybe you can think of reasons why!). I have since written up these findings for research papers and books, I’ve presented them at conferences and talks, and had them reported on the news and in newspapers.

I feel quite lucky that I don’t have a typical day as I like my work to be varied! Some days I would be in the office, having meetings with my students or colleagues, some days I could be teaching and some times I could spend the day writing emails or trying to contact people who I want to conduct research with. Research days would often be quite hectic, trying to organise all the questionnaires or material for collecting responses, getting to where I was collecting data from (usually schools), and meeting with staff and students. Other days I might spend the day travelling around presenting my research, or meeting with people who want to hear more about it (I’ve met with schools, councils, community groups, charities, school children). These days are tiring but very exciting, and always leave me feeling positive and inspired! Finally, some days I spend at home in my jammies, reading up on recent research, catching up on admin or writing up my own findings!