Our Graduates

Please carry on reading to find out more about the career journeys of some of our graduates.

Becca Hutchins         

Road Safety Psychologist

I graduated from the University of Portsmouth’s Psychology department in 2005 and four months later, I was lucky enough to find a graduate position at the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) in Crowthorne, Berkshire. I work in the Road Safety Group, which is made up of people with expertise in behavioural change, risk management, road safety strategy and policy, statistics, accident data analysis, road safety engineering, international road safety and accessibility. When I first started at TRL, I had no idea how a psychology degree would fit in with ‘creating the future of transport’, but it really does – hands on research studies, SPSS data analysis and report writing is happening all the time here! In the last seven years, I’ve been given the opportunity to work on a massive variety of different projects related to: electric vehicles, learner drivers, older and disabled drivers, cyclists, the UK driving test and the UK motorcycle test. I specialise in qualitative research – largely interviews and focus groups, which I love, because you get to hear so many interesting stories and then piece it all together to answer important research questions. My qualitative research experience includes designing and tailoring interview topic guides, conducting in-depth face to face and telephone interviews as well as designing and facilitating focus groups with a broad range of participant types. In addition to collecting the data, I analyse the data using a number of different approaches including thematic content analysis and discourse analysis. My favourite parts of my job are working with interesting, like-minded people and working on projects that can actually change things for the better (for example, making people safer and reducing accidents). I feel that my psychology degree stood me in great stead for working in a research environment and am delighted that I have a job which lets me use the skills that I gained at Portsmouth.

Julie Udell

Associate Lecturer and Research Associate

After my undergraduate degree I continued on to an MSc in Psychological Research Methods, followed by a PhD within the School of Health Sciences and Social Work which looked at fall and injury prevention interventions.   During the time I was studying I had various roles within the Department of Psychology including work as a tutor and demonstrator, as well as a Research Assistant for several different staff research projects.   One of my work roles now is an Associate Lecturer teaching employability to Psychology students. As part of my role I run the career-focused units and I act as a Careers Advisor in the department.  My other work role is a Research Associate in the School of Health Sciences and Social Work.  Initially, I was working on the PEOPPLE project (Putting Evidence for Older People into Practice in Living Environments) - a community-based project aiming to address some of the unmet needs of older people living in the local community (in a variety of living accommodations). Following the completion of this project, I am now working on a project which aims to develop a falls reduction toolkit to improve the hospital environment, specifically looking at clinical and environmental factors affecting falls in dementia wards. I am working with the Health and Safety Laboratory on this project and we are interested to see how people could change the ward environment to help reduce the number of falls.  It really goes without saying that my time as an undergraduate helped me on my career path - both in terms of giving me the skills I needed to go into teaching and research, and also giving me the opportunity to discover how passionate I was about both career areas.