Profile

I have run five marathons and twenty five half marathons, and I enjoy teaching other people who to run. I like to run because it means that I can eat more cake. I also like to bake cakes.

My PhD is part-time so I spend three days a week working on my PhD and two days a week working for a small charity that helps refugees settle in the UK.

I have lived in four different European countries and have visited every continent in the world. I have stroked a lion (their fur isn’t as soft as you would imagine), I have jumped out of a plane above the desert and I have dived with sharks.

When I was at school, I didn’t know any psychologists and I didn’t really know what psychology was. I didn’t really start reading about psychology until I was in my thirties, and I decided to make it into a career in my forties. I wish I had found out more earlier!

I would describe myself as a health psychologist, but also a cyberpsychologist.
I am doing a PhD in Health Psychology at Nottingham University. Health Psychologists are generally involved in one of three topic areas: how to get people to engage in healthy behaviours, how people come to terms with illness or chronic conditions, and how doctors and patients interact. Cyberpsychology looks at all the ways humans use computers and how they interact with each other through computers.
I am researching how online support groups can help people who are afraid of the dentist. People who live with dental anxiety often avoid going to the dentist. This can mean that their teeth often don’t get treated as quickly as they need to. Online support groups bring people together who are living with a similar issue or have a common problem. They meet virtually in chat groups and forums and talk about their fears or their problems. I want to see if talking to people who have a similar fear of the dentist can help a person overcome their fear and visit the dentist.

A typical day involves a lot of reading. I will read a lot of different articles about the same topic and will try and make sense of everything that I have read. A researcher’s job is to understand what knowledge already exists, to find pockets of knowledge that don’t exist but would be helpful to know, and to fill those pockets of knowledge by doing research.

The way that researchers share knowledge is by publishing articles and making presentations at conferences (either in person or online). So alongside reading, I spend a lot of time writing about my research. Most researchers work in teams, and have to be able to work on their own but also collaborate with others to write articles or analyse data.

Finally, when I am actually doing research, that involves speaking to participants about their experiences, asking them lots of questions, and listening to what they have to say. When I’ve interviewed enough participants, I then have to try and interpret and summarise what they have all said. I would normally get input from other researchers at this stage, who help make sure that I am doing a good job by reviewing my work.

When I’m writing or reading I spend a lot of time by myself and my cat likes to keep me company. When I’m interviewing I’m spending a lot of time with other people.

Cat supervising my work