Background and experience
I am a Professor of Psychology and Behavioural Science. I have a joint appointment in both the Faculty of Medicine and the School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Southampton UK. I am also an adjunct professor at the University of Agder, Norway, and have honorary appointments at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and University College London. Previously, I was a senior research officer with the Home Office Research and Planning Unit, and research fellow in the Faculty of Law, University of Bristol.
Areas of responsibility
I run a programme of work in both the UK and in low-income countries aiming to engage young people in improving their sense of agency, well-being and mental health, to benefit their health in general but their diets and physical activity habits more specifically. My team’s approach is participatory and combines social activism focused on engaging young people in the climate change and health agenda and testing methods of one-to-one support and digital resources including smartphone games. Much of this work takes place as part of her NIHR Programme Grant for Applied Research EACH-B (Engaging Adolescents in Changing Behaviour). I partner in this activity with the TALENT network of colleagues with interests in adolescent health and well-being based in institutions in low-and-middle-income countries. My team also ran a five-country, longitudinal qualitative study with young people throughout the pandemic exploring their experience, mental health, well-being and resilience, data from which supported UK local and national government COVID messaging to young people.
Teaching
My main research interests are the food choices of young women and the complex of psychological, social and environmental factors that affect them and the food choices they make for their children./ behaviour change approaches to improving diet, nutritional status and body composition in young men and women before, during and after pregnancy.
I co-lead the in-person, educational and digital intervention research of the Southampton NIHR Biomedical Research Centre Behavioural Sciences theme. My team has developed Healthy Conversation Skills. These evidence-based skills enable health and social care workers and teachers to motivate and support behaviour change in their patients, clients and students.
LifeLab is central to my team’s educational behaviour change approach. This state-of-the-art teaching laboratory aims to improve life-long health by engaging teenage school students with the science behind health messages. The £2.4million NIHR-funded EACH-B programme is developing an intervention using LifeLab, Healthy Conversation Skills and gaming to engage teenagers in eating better and being more active.
I am an investigator on behaviour change intervention studies to improve adolescent and maternal health in India, sub-Saharan Africa and Canada and a collaborator on the Canadian Institute for Health’s HeLTI programme of preconception intervention studies in Canada, India, South Africa and China.