Contact
Teaching Summary
Undergraduate (A100 Medicine)
- Communication Skills (Years 1 and 2)
- Behavioural Sciences (Years 1 and 2)
Postgraduate (Masters in Mental Health and Forensic Doctorate)
- Adolescence
- Dementia
- Aggression
- Alcohol and Substance Use
Professional (MRCPsych)
Research Summary
Summary
I am interested in alcohol and substance use, and mental health at different time-points across the lifespan. I am also interested in mechanisms that may underlie or maintain such problems including impulse control and decision-making.
Populations
- Offenders and staff in forensic services
- Older adults and retirees
- University students
Research groups
CANDAL, Institute of Mental Health (young people)
Dementia Operational Group, Institute of Mental Health (older adults)
Current and recently completed projects
- Measuring cortical dynamics of inhibitory control before, during and after Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS). MRC Confidence in Concept Award.
- Pour your own drink: An interactive way to measure home drinking. Masters in Mental Health Project.
- Drinking over 65. Using Cafe Connect as a public engagement tool. Wellcome Trust Project.
- Identifying typologies of drink drivers: A study of recently convicted drink drivers in a Scottish driving education programme. Doctorate in Forensic Psychology Project.
- How staff report, describe and manage aggressive behaviour from patients with an acquired brain injury (ABI) in a low and medium secure forensic hospital. Doctorate in Forensic Psychology Project.
- The feasibility of training staff in motivational techniques to enable them to engage offenders in a Thinking Skills Programme at a probation service in London. A randomised-controlled trial. Doctorate in Forensic Psychology Project.
Please get in touch by e-mail for any collaboration.
Recent Publications
Past Research
I worked at Swansea University (UK) for 4 years where I attained my PhD in the effects of recreational ecstasy and cannabis use on sleep and cognition. I then completed a postdoctoral position at University of Wollongong (Australia) measuring cognitive deficits in adolescent cannabis users with elevated impulsivity and risk-taking. Moving from New South Wales, I obtained a Senior Research Fellow position at Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre (Melbourne, Australia) where I managed two large Victorian government-funded projects, the first a qualitative and quantitative examination of benzodiazepine abuse and impulsive unplanned crime in long-term heroin addicts and the second, the development of a screening program for alcohol use in GP surgeries.
I have worked across a number of settings, and with different populations. At Nottingham, I am interested in the fluctuation of alcohol and substance use across the lifespan, from adolescence to young adulthood, to mid-life, and into old age. I am now interested in how impulsivity and decision-making has an impact on alcohol and substance use and mental health.