My research focuses on preventing depression and anxiety; the key questions that drive my work are what works, for whom, when, and why?

Before starting my Fellowship in February 2023 at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, King's College London, I was a PostDoc in Prof. Claudi Bockting's lab at the Amsterdam University Medical Centre and University of Amsterdam. I also co-established the £10mln Centre for Urban Mental Health as Assistant Director. This centre uniquely combines complexity and mental health science (position paper: here). 

I defended my PhD in 2021, entitled "Turning Prevention into a Challenge: Towards a New Model of Depression Prevention" at the University of Amsterdam, supervised by Prof. Claudi Bockting, Prof. Simon Gilbody and Dr. Marlies Brouwer. In my thesis, I argue for an integrated model of depression prevention which incorporates both relapse and onset prevention. 

My research on the efficacy and moderators of the effect of psychological interventions for relapse prevention for depression has directly informed the Dutch Multidisciplinary Clinical Guidelines for Depression and was profiled by a JAMA Psychiatry podcast. 

I previously held senior research leadership positions at the National Centre for Social Research (Director of Analysis) and Mental Health Foundation (Head of Research).

As you can see on my media page, I am passionate about knowledge translation and science communication.

Previous employment:

• National Centre for Social Research - Director of Analysis (Policy Research Centre) & Research Director (Longitudinal Surveys)

  • Directing wave 10 of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing

  • Delivering quantitative analysis for public and private-sector clients, resulting in a range of innovative outputs (e.g. Youth Futures Foundation data dashboard)

• Centre for Urban Mental Health, University of Amsterdam - Assistant Director & Post-doc

• Mental Health Foundation - Head of Research and Research Manager

Prizes and awards:

• King’s College London, Prudence Trust Research Fellowship Award. "How to shift the dial for depression and anxiety prevention in young people? Re-imagining risk, personalised interventions and scalability." 2023 

• Best Editorial by the British Journal of Psychiatry. ”Unleashing talent in mental health sciences: gender equality at the top.”  2019

• Outstanding paper award of Excellence by the Journal of Criminal Psychology. ”Predicting recidivism for offenders in UK substance dependence treatment: Do mental health symptoms matter?” 2015

Ancillary activities:

• Advisor to several mental health charities and foundations on youth prevention in the UK

• Secondary data analysis consultant for a select number of charities (e.g. National Centre for Social Research)

• Co-ordinator International Taskforce for preventing relapse of depression 

• Member of the Global Consortium for Depression Prevention

• Board member European Association for Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy

• Founding member Centre for Excellence in Mental Health Sciences