Psychology PhD

I supervise PhD students addressing a range of topics including critical psychologies of climate change, climate activism, nature-connection, Anthropocene studies, nature-based interventions, human-animal relations and posthumanities. I am especially interested in supervising students adopting qualitative methodological and critical theoretical approaches. Interdisciplinary projects are especially welcome. 

I welcome applications from postgraduate students interested in research projects that are rooted in the disciplines of critical social and community psychology. Particular areas of interest are: critical approaches to health and citizenship, critical discursive psychology, creative methodologies, the role of media in everyday life, and post-feminist sensibilities.

Josh Cameron is an experienced research supervisor at masters and doctoral level. He is interested to support research into the following research areas: mental health recovery; mental health and employment; meaningful work; occupational science/justice and social justice orientated resilience. His primary expertise lies in the use of qualitative methods within a (critical) realist methodology. Josh encourages his students to adopt collaborative and participatory approaches to their research projects. He is always happy for prospective doctoral and masters students to contact him via email j.cameron@brighton.ac.uk to have an exploratory discussion.

I would be very interested in supervising postgraduate students conducting projects on:

• Child and adolescent discourses surrounding sex in different cultures/countries;
• Development of telling secrets and lies (decision-making, social context, motivation);
• Secrets as a social currency in social interaction;
• Online deception (use of impression management strategies to explore online identity);
• Challenges facing police who interview child and adolescent victims of abuse;
• Perceptions of children with sexually harmful behaviour towards other children;
• Children's understanding of truths/lie and how to promote honesty.

I welcome research ideas related to risk and trust in and healthcare settings, perspectives on vaccines (including hesitancy and refusal); public understanding of science; poverty, deprivation, and social exclusion. Research related to Indian subcontinent and the Global South are particularly welcome. Interested students are encouraged to send a short email to me with their initial ideas.

I'm happy to supervise PhD students on a range of topics broadly relating to Forensic Psychology and Cyberpsychology. I am especially interested in supervising students adopting an Eye Tracking methodology. Current PhD projects I am supervising address the following:

• Terror Management Theory approaches to climate change communication (Joe Rennie-Taylor)

Students drawn to studying with me are generally people with a commitment to social change. All of them share my passion for researching resilience-related topics and most of their studies involve some form of co-production with communities, policymakers or practitioners. Many of them also volunteer for our social enterprise Boingboing and there are loads of opportunities in our CRSJ for students to get involved in some fabulous personal development activities, for example attending conferences on behalf of our Centre, being on the Management Group, staffing a stand at international events, etc.

Prospective supervisory topics I get excited about include:Co-productive and resilience-based approaches to tackling social and environmental issues including:Child, family and adult mental healthPractitioner stress and burnoutSchools practicesHigher Education community-university partnership practices.

Helen supervises PhD and MD students with an interest in arts-based interventions in healthcare, education and wellbeing, and/or the use of creative, arts-based research methods.  She is interested in talking to doctoral applicants who are interested in researching creativity and the arts, with foci including: art therapy; arts interventions for health and wellbeing, including invisible chronic and contested conditions; social prescribing; creativity and the lived experience of dementia; arts education; spoken word and poetry slam; art worlds/communities; arts inclusivity; everyday creativity; and the artistic process.   She is also interested in supervising students who wish to work with creative, arts-based and/or participatory methods, including: poetic inquiry; autoethnography; photo voice; photo elicitation; collaborative poetics; and participatory action research.  Helen currently supervises four doctoral candidates, who are researching: the lived experiences of women with borderline personality disorder (including creative coping strategies); neurologic music therapy with young people with juvenille dementia; black people's experiences of intimacy and psychosis; and decolonial praxis in museum learning.  She has previously supervised and examined work covering topics that include: perceptions of frailty in the undergraduate medical curriculum; the impact of austerity policies on homeless people; spoken word with young offenders in a Macedonian prison; the performance and perception of authenticiy in contemporary UK spoken word poetry; and NHS staff experiences of work.

I am interested in supervising students in the interdisciplinary areas of migration, war, conflict, violence, refugees, transnationalism, ethnicity, mobilities, cities, migrant health and mental health, social inequalities, and environmental violence- particularly those working on Pakistan, Afghanistan, and migrant populations in Asia and Europe. My past and present students also work on very different kinds of topic, including around race and sexuality, autophenomenography and psychotherapy, childrens’s violence to parents, climate-induced migration as an emergent political and policy field, adolescent refugee mental health, female genital mutilation in Southern England, honour based violence and the British police, trans lives in Bolivia, refugee women and yoga in Sweden- and postdoctoral resarch on peacemaking in the Basque country.

I would be interested in supervising doctoral students in areas of Positive psychology, specifically how people think about life satisfaction; the cognitive processes underpinning life satisfaction and happiness; the importance of money to life satisfaction; improvisation and how it relates to wellbeing. More broadly, this encompasses: well being; life satisfaction; happiness; hedonic wellbeing; eudaimonic well being; flow. I would also consider some aspects of Social psychology, specifically the relationship between friendship and coping behaviours.

I am interested in supervising a number of topics rooted in the disciplines of Critical Social Psychology, Critical Community Psychology, and Discursive Psychology, with a transdisciplinary ethos. Broad areas are: non-normative sexualities, religious and ideological discourses, nature and sustainability. For example:

- Non-normative sexualities, LGBTI+ issues

- Sex work, sex workers, and intersectionalities

- Religious and ideological discourses on sexuality

- Transdisciplinary approaches to sexuality and gender

- Permaculture, Transition Towns, group dynamics, grass-root social movements

- Transdisciplinary approaches to environmental crisis, peak oil, and climate change

- Non-clinical approaches to mental health

- Values of space in shaping people’s social identities

- Critical Community Psychology

- Critical Social Psychology, and Discursive Psychology