Summary

I am a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Portsmouth.

My research focuses on pain, injury, rehabilitation, and frailty in a variety of contexts and populations. My work on factors that predispose individuals to become frail in later life has been discussed in the media.

I teach Health Psychology and Research Methods in Psychology.

Biography

I graduated from Maastricht University, the Netherlands, in 2011 with an MSc degree in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience. In 2015 I completed a PhD in Psychology, which I divided evenly between KU Leuven in Belgium and McGill University in Canada.

I then took up a post-doctoral position at the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences at Loughborough University for two years, and in 2018 I joined De Montfort University in Leicester as a Lecturer in Psychology until 2020.

I am now a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Portsmouth.

Research Interests

Broadly, I am interested in (chronic) pain and healthy ageing, in particular the following areas:

1. Biopsychosocial factors influencing different aspects of pain – e.g. fear of pain predicting anatomical spreading of pain
2. Recovery from post-surgical pain – specifically, identifying predictors of and developing interventions to improve recovery
3. The interactions between pain and cognition – for example, how pain affects cognitive performance and vice versa
4. Frailty and healthy ageing – specifically, developing interventions that improve healthy ageing, wellbeing, and reduce the risk of frailty

Teaching Responsibilities

I am the module coordinator for the 2^nd year “Psychological Research Methods” module. I also deliver lectures for the 3^rd year optional “Issues In Clinical And Health Psychology” module and the MSc Health Psychology.

I supervise undergraduate and postgraduate dissertation students.