School of Psychology
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I re-joined the School of Psychology in September 2004 as a Teaching Fellow and Learning Support Tutor and became a lecturer in September 2005 and a Senior Lecturer in 2011. I am a former PhD student and Graduate Teaching Assistant of the department (during the period 1998-2001). My PhD focused on identifying the social skills problems that put children at risk of being bullied. Also, I developed and ran a Social Skills Training Programme for children bullied by their peers, and evaluated the effectiveness of this intervention. Following my PhD I worked as a Research Associate in the School of Social Relations on a project to evaluate the work of the NSPCC Schools Teams (2001-2003), and for one year I was a member of the research team based at the University of Birmingham responsible for the National Evaluation of the Children’s Fund.
I am committed to conducting applied social psychological research which has both theoretical and practical implications. In particular, I am interested in the problem of bullying in schools and domestic abuse. Supported by two research grants in 2009 (from the BPS and British Academy) I developed a humour styles questionnaire for children and young people and have recently completed a longitudinal study funded by the ESRC to examine the links between children’s humour styles and the problem of bullying in schools, in collaboration with Dr Simon Hunter at the University of Strathclyde and Dr Sian Jones at Oxford Brookes University (project blog). Another collaboration with Prof David Gadd and Professor Ian Butler resulted in a major ESRC award of £385,000 over three years to examine the question of how to prevent more boys from becoming perpetrators of domestic violence in later life. For further details see www.boystomenproject.com. We have also recently completed a European wide project supported by a substantial grant under the Daphne III call. The total sum was for 309,000 euros over 2 years starting in March 2011. The READAPT project (Relationship Education and Domestic Abuse Prevention Tuition) involved us working with 6 partners across Europe in the UK, Spain, Malta, France, Sweden and Belgium (www.readapt.eu)
I am Chair of the Social Psychology research group and also organise the Children and Young People Research Group. As a member of the Centre for Psychological Research I sit within the Research Institute for Social Sciences.
Selected Publications
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2013. Young teenagers' experiences of domestic abuse. Journal of Youth Studies. doi>
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2010. The association between adolescents' beliefs in a just world and their attitudes to victims of bullying. British Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 80(2), 183-198. doi>
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2009. Evaluating the effectiveness of a school-based counselling service in the UK. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, vol. 37(2), 95-106. doi>
Full Publications List show
Journal Articles
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2013. Young teenagers' experiences of domestic abuse. Journal of Youth Studies. doi>
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2010. The association between adolescents' beliefs in a just world and their attitudes to victims of bullying. British Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 80(2), 183-198. doi>
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2009. Evaluating the effectiveness of a school-based counselling service in the UK. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, vol. 37(2), 95-106. doi>
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2006. Longitudinal Associations Between Submissive/Nonassertive Social Behaviour and Different Types of Peer Victimization. Violence and Victims, vol. 21(3), 383-400. doi>
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2005. Construction and validation of a children's interpersonal trust scale. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, vol. 23, 271-292.
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2005. Teaching psychology students to write structured abstracts. Psycholgy Teaching Review, vol. 11(1), 2-11.
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2005. Using Activity Theory to evaluate a complex response to social exclusion. Educational and Child Psychology, vol. 21(1), 51-61.
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2004. Clarity across the disciplines: An analysis of texts in the Sciences, Social Sciences, and Arts & Humanities. Science Communication, vol. 26(2), 188-210. doi>
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2004. Assessing the mock viva: The experiences of British doctoral students. Studies in Higher Education, vol. 29(6), 727-738. doi>
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2004. Cross-sectional and longitudinal relations among peer reported trustworthiness, social relationships, and psychological adjustment in children and early adolescents from the United Kingdom and Canada. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, vol. 88(1), 46-67.
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2003. A social skills training (SST) programme for victims of bullying. Pastoral Care in Education, vol. 21(2), 19-26.
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2003. Abstracts, introductions and discussions: How far do they differ in style?. Scientometrics, vol. 57(3), 389-398. doi>
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2003. Response inhibition can affect reaction time to abrupt onset displays. Perception, vol. 32(12), 1377-1391.
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2003. Using new technology to assess the academic writing styles of male and female pairs and individuals. Journal of Technical Writing & Communication, vol. 33(3), 243-261.
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2002. Exploring the identity and subjectivity of 'talented' adolescent girls. Feminism and Psychology, vol. 12(2), 153-159.
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2002. The viva experience: Examining the examiners. Higher Education Review, vol. 35(1), 24-30.
Other
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2001. The effects of teaching students to write structured abstracts. Proceedings of the British Psychological Society.
Year 1
- PSY-10018 : Individuals in Society I (seminar tutor)
- PSY-10017 : Biological and Cognitive Psychology 1 (seminar tutor)
- PSY-10019 : Applied Psychology
Year 2
- PSY-20012 : Developmental and Social Psychology
- PSY-20013 : Survey and Qualitative Research Methods
Year 3
- PSY-30061 : Final Year Project
- PSY-30041 : Peer Relationships in Childhood and Adolescence (module leader)
- PSY-30100 : Domestic Violence (module leader)
- PSY-30097 : Contemporary Research in Social Psychology
PG level
I teach on the MSc Psychology programmes including the MSc in Counselling Psychology. I have one PhD student, Lucy James, who is researching younger children's use of humour.
My excellence in learning and teaching was recognised in 2010 with a Keele University Teaching Excellence Award.

