Biographies
Professor Alexander Baldacchino
PhD, MD, MPhil, FRCPsych, FRCP, Clinical Professor at the University of St Andrews School of Medicine, Scotland
amb30@st-andrews.ac.uk
Professor Alex Baldaccino is Clinical Professor at the University of St Andrews School of Medicine, specialising in Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine. He is an Executive Board Member and President of the International Society of Addiction Medicine (ISAM). His main research interest lies in improving the lives of individuals with a history of substance use disorders. His research portfolio has a common thread of understanding the co-morbid conditions (physical and psychological) arising as a result of chronic abuse of pharmacological agents with dependence potential especially opioids, nicotine and alcohol. He is interested in utilising informatics systems, clinical outcome data, neuropsychological and neuroimaging processes and digital technology amongst many other possibilities in order to identify and minimise risks present in this population. Additionally, he has been working with United Nation agencies such as United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), with the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), Pompidou Group and other international intergovernmental organisations. After 40 years as a practising clinician he has just retired from NHS Fife as a senior consultant psychiatrist and clinical lead. During that time he also acted as Director for Research, Development and Innovation (NHS Fife) and Clinical Lead in Addictions (NHS Fife), both for 22 years.
Dr Sarah Bekaert, RN
Senior Lecturer, lead for the Children and Families Research Group, Oxford Brookes University, England
sbekaert@brookes.ac.uk
Twitter: @sarahbekaert
Website: https://drsarahbekaert.net/
Study website: https://sites.google.com/brookes.ac.uk/schoolnursinginthetimeofcovid/home
Sarah is a senior lecturer in child health at Oxford Brookes University, UK. She is a children’s nurse with experience in school nursing, child protection, and sexual health. Her research focuses on public health issues related to teenagers. These include teenage pregnancy and parenting, intimate partner violence in teen relationships, interpersonal violence. She has led on developing a restorative reflective resource for school nurses arising from the School Nursing in the Time of Covid study. She is currently working with Thames Valley Police on public health approaches to tackle violent crime, specifically focusing on early intervention in childhood and the teen years. She is Reviews Editor for the British Journal of Child Health and on the editorial board of Children and Health, a section within Frontiers in Public Health and Frontiers in Pediatrics, as Review Editor. She is Affiliate Lecturer at Kristianstad University, Sweden.
Dr Georgia Cook
Postdoctoral Researcher and Associate Lecturer, Oxford Brookes University, England
gcook@brookes.ac.uk
Twitter:@GeorgiaC_sleep
Georgia is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Associate Lecturer based at Oxford Brookes University, UK. Her research interests focus around work with children and families, and she has expertise in both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. She has undertaken a range of systematic and scoping reviews of areas pertinent to my research interests. She has experience across a range of research projects including a multisite randomised control trial, which is looking to improve sleep and quality of life in children with epilepsy (and their families); and evaluation work, for example the efficacy of a scheme designed to reduce risk of violence in young people. She has conducted work with healthcare professionals to explore their experiences and perspectives as well as to develop practical tools to benefit their professional practice. She teaches a number of psychology modules at undergraduate level.
Dr Cristina Crocamo
Lecturer in Applied Technical Medical Sciences at the Department of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
cristina.crocamo@unimib.it
Twitter: @CristinaCrocamo
Cristina works in the field of digital health focusing on multifaceted approaches to explore clinical, biological, and digital phenotypes -and their interplay- of mental disorders and risky behaviours, especially alcohol and substances. In recent years, her research interests have been focusing especially on data-driven approaches in the real world in the field of public mental health, including how e-health technologies can be exploited in order to devise interventions and preventive strategies and implement training programs. These encompass also the role of social networks in vulnerable populations considering the individual and community factors (e.g., from social media data) that are likely to most influence poor mental health outcomes from a precision medicine perspective, by benefiting from the use of machine learning techniques for prediction purposes. Cristina has a strong methodological background and takes part in study design, data modelling and interpretation. She has also expertise in systematic reviews and meta-analyses with extensive knowledge of complex statistical methods. Cristina has collaborated in both European and national projects. She has co-authored several publications in scientific peer-reviewed journals and she is referee for international journals.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2979-2107)
Scopus Author ID 55634683100 (110 Documents; H-index = 31 - Scopus, June 2023)
Monica Duman
SW, MSc, PhD Researcher, Associate Lecturer in Social Work, Postgraduate Researcher, Oxford Brookes University, England
mduman@brookes.ac.uk
Twitter: @Monica_Duman
With many years’ experience in frontline child protection and the family court arena, Monica has always been interested in exploring the factors that influence children’s outcomes, both at individual and organisational levels. She is particularly interested in the development of new or improved neglect practice guidelines, tools, and interventions that would benefit both the children and families accessing support, and the practitioners providing this. Monica's PhD research project explores how assessment tools and chronologies are used by health and social care professionals to identify and assess child neglect. The study examines international literature for tools available to practitioners for working with child neglect, it then maps out local neglect practice approaches in England, and concludes with a qualitative phase exploring practitioners’ views and experiences.
Josie Jacobs
PhD Researcher, Wellbeing & Resilience, Oxford Brookes University. Founder, Thrive Together Consulting, England
josephine.jacobs-2018@brookes.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josie-jacobs-mapp-9166247
Josie has been researching and working in the field of wellbeing and resilience for over ten years, following a successful career in marketing. She holds an MSc in Positive Psychology, and her dissertation research focused on testing a resilience programme with parents of children with special needs. Josie has worked with private and public sector organisations (including the NHS), to teach the skill of wellbeing and resilience, through workshops and talks. She adopts a strengths-based approach in her work and research, using appreciative inquiry. Her PhD research is developing a resilience intervention to promote thriving in mothers of primary school children.
Liz Jestico
RN, Senior Lecturer in Children's Nursing at Oxford Brookes University, deputy lead for the Children and Families Research Group, England
ejestico@brookes.ac.uk
Twitter: @liz_jestico
Liz has been a senior lecturer in children’s nursing for ten years. Alongside this role, Liz is currently undertaking her PhD. Prior to working in nursing education, Liz worked clinically in children's cancer care. She worked at three Principal Treatment Centres for Paediatric Oncology within the UK. Liz's research explores what it means for parents to be supported by their 'significant others' with making decisions when their child has cancer. Liz also takes a keen interest in children's nursing education. Her Masters research examined Children's Nurses' preparedness to care for children with cancer following their pre-registration education. She has also been co-investigator for a research project that investigated how peer-supported learning could support children's nursing students' development in reflective writing skills, literature searching, and problem-based learning.
Dr Emmanuelle Jouet
Director at the Social Sciences and Mental Health Research Laboratory of the GHU-Paris Psychiatry & Neurosciences, France
Emmanuelle.JOUET@ghu-paris.fr
Emmanuelle has been Director at the Social Sciences and Mental Health Research Laboratory since January 2021, where she is co-piloting the development of the partnership with patients and families at the GHU-Paris psychiatry & neurosciences. For over 15 years, she has been working on destigmatising mental health, mental health promotion, developing new training methods involving people living with mental health illnesses as both trainers and trainees, and evaluating continuous learning training programmes for mental health professionals. During 2020-2021, she was responsible for the coordination of the ERICA project funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020) for the French site (Paris). Her recent research work has taken place within a French national mental health programme, Housing First, and two EU supported projects: Promoting Mental Health minimising mental illness and Integrating Social Inclusion through Education, (PROMISE, DG SANCO, n° 2008-216) and Empowerment of Mental Illness Service Users Through Lifelong Learning Integration and Action (EMILIA, CIT-3-2005-513435). She has also developed the first French training programs for all stakeholders on promoting recovery for mental health service users in France, using innovative training approaches based on participative ongoing implementation evaluation techniques.
Professor Marja Kaunonen
RN, PhD, Professor in Nursing Science and Head of Health Sciences at Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
marja.kaunonen@tuni.fi
Marja has been the president of European Network of Training, Evaluation and Research since 2018. Her research portfolio includes research with families in challenging life situations, such as mental illness, cancer or death of a family member as well as birth of a new baby, and support in challenging life situations. Marja teaches bachelor, masters and doctoral students and is actively involved in competence and learning outcome based curriculum development internationally in Europe, China and South America. She has been involved in several EU funded projects, such as EMILIA, Camille and ERICA. She has around 250 peer reviewed publications and presents extensively in international and national conferences. She is a Member of the Research Council for Biosciences, Health, and the Environment of the Academy of Finland since January 2022.
Mary Lacy
RN, Senior Lecturer in Mental Health Nursing, Deputy Programme Lead - Mental Health and Children's Nursing, Subject Co-ordinator - Mental Health Nursing (BSc, MSc) & MSci Dual Registration Nursing, England
mlacy@brookes.ac.uk
Mary is a nursing doctorate researcher, senior lecturer and deputy programme lead at Oxford Brookes University. She qualified as a mental health nurse in 1998 and worked in a variety of child and adolescent mental health services. Her research explores how nurses in child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) community teams formulate an understanding of their client’s presentation. Her research is influenced by her interest in child and adolescent mental health nursing practice and how we educate our students and staff to support their nursing practice. There have been few studies of assessment processes overall within CAMHS including a paucity of research about how nurses explain or conceptualise the information gained through assessment. Using a diary-interview method, Mary’s case study research design aims to explore the process of how nurses develop an understanding of their client’s presentation and what the influences upon this are. It is anticipated that gaining a more detailed understanding of nurses’ practice during this crucial stage of assessment and care planning may inform recommendations for benchmarking nurses’ practice of formulation within community CAMH teams and skills development in formulation within clinical practice and nurse education.
Professor Eija Paavilainen
PhD, Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences/Health Sciences/Nursing Science, Tampere University, Finland
eija.paavilainen@tuni.fi
https://www.tuni.fi/fi/eija-paavilainen
Professor Eija Paavilainen has been professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences/Health Sciences/Nursing Science, Tampere University since 2001. Since 2002 she has also held a research position in Etelä-Pohjanmaa Welfare County. Her main research and expertise is with families with children in challenging life situations, and families as clients in social and health care settings. She is the leader of the Family Violence Research Team, including post doctoral and doctoral researchers, and masters students. Her main research projects concern family violence, child maltreatment and family risks, and care services for families with children. Projects have been funded by the Academy of Finland, Boards of Hospital
Districts, and Ministry for Social Affairs and Health, Finland. The latest has been the
ERICA Project during 2019-2021 funded by European Union (https://projects.tuni.fi/erica/).
She has over 200 conference presentations and over 250 scientific and other publications.
Her research team has written national guidelines on preventing child maltreatment,
published by Nursing Research Foundation in 2022: https://www.hotus.fi/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/hoitosuositus-lasten-kaltoinkohtelu-eng-web.pdf
Dr Henrike Schecke
Clinical Psychologist, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and Clinic for Addictive Behaviour and Addiction Medicine, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
henrike.schecke@uni-due.de
Henrike Schecke is a clinical psychologist, cognitive-behaviour therapist and researcher. She works at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and Clinic for Addictive Behaviour and Addiction Medicine at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. A focus of her research interest is substance use in a sexual context, particularly among men who have sex with men. Here, the focus is primarily on facilitating factors for substance use (e.g., discrimination, minority stress), motives for use, and prevention of adverse health consequences, such as sexually transmitted infections. Also aspects of mental health among men who engage in chemsex behaviour. She also has a research and therapy interest in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) in adults; specifically the diagnosis, and associated psychiatric comorbidities and social cognition processes. She is also a lecturer in teaching medical and psychotherapy students and early career psychiatrists.
Dr Laura Strumidlo
Deputy Director Oxford School of Nursing and Midwifery, Oxford Brookes University, England
lstrumidlo@brookes.ac.uk
Laura has been in nursing for 34 years and is as passionate about being a nurse and nurse educator as when she started out on her journey. She worked in care of the elderly and medicine before specialising in critical care for most of her clinical career. Staff professional development, clinical ethics and critical care nursing were her focus and she was funded to do an MSc in Health Care Ethics. She is advisory editor for the journal of clinical ethics. Before coming to Oxford Brookes University, she was senior lecturer at Coventry University since 2010. During that time she was part of a West Midlands Children and Young People's Palliative and Complex Care research project working with parents and clinicians to improve end of life care for children and neonates. Her doctorate focused on the student nurse experience of developing resilience for nursing. Nationally Laura is part of a Council of Deans Innovation and Pedagogy group and is part of the Cov-ed UKRI funded research project led by Oxford Brookes evaluating the impact of the pandemic on nurse education.
Diana Yardley
RN, MSc, Advanced Nurse Practitioner Children’s Diabetes, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, England
Diana.Yardley@ouh.nhs.uk
Twitter: @yardleyd_mphil
Diana has dual qualifications in nursing (Children and Adult) and over a decade of diabetes experience, across a variety of settings both in the UK and Europe. Diana is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner, working with the Oxfordshire children’s diabetes team for nine years. She has previously completed a three year tenure as chair of the Thames Valley Children and Young People's Diabetes Network (CYPD) the only nurse to hold this position within the CYPD National network, during that time. Diana’s successful application to attend the International Society of Paediatric and Adolescent Diabetes (ISAPD) healthcare professional science school in 2018, as one of only 2 British participants, set the foundation for her PhD. Diana has spent the majority of her career working with children and families. Following multiple experiences of safeguarding and children protection relating to diabetes care, including attending family court related to a fabricated illness case, Diana is interested in factors affecting family’s management of diabetes in children. Diana’s PhD explores UK based health care professionals' experiences of safeguarding and child protection in relation to children with diabetes. Diana has been awarded two NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre Doctoral Awards.
Dr Lidia Zabłocka-Żytka
Clinical Psychologist and Psychotherapist, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Psychology in the Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw, Poland
lzablocka@aps.edu.pl
Lidia is Clinical Psychologist, Psychotherapist, and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Psychology in the Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw, Poland. Since 2008 she has also worked as a psychotherapist in The Dialog Therapy Centre and coordinates the Academic Psychological Clinic for students. She has two main research interests: mental health promotion and psychological help for adolescents and adults from vulnerable groups, for example mental health patients, medical health patients, migrants and refugees. She has been a member of The European Network on Training, Evaluation and Research in Mental Health (ENTER) for ten years and part of the steering group since 2016. She has also been involved in European Commission funded research projects: CAMHEE (2009-2011), CAMILLE (2013-2015), ERICA (2019-2021). As a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist she is providing therapy for adults as well as training and workshops for professionals.
Dr Giedre Zlatkute
PhD, Honorary Lecturer at University of St Andrews, School of Medicine; Doctorate in Clinical Psychology Trainee at Plymouth University, UK.
Giedre has a wide span of research interests focusing on psychology and phenomenology. ranging from neuroscience and psychophysics, to health psychology, child maltreatment, and substance use and addiction. During 2020 – 2021 Giedre was co-coordinator of the ERICA project funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020) for the Scottish site. She co-delivered the pilot ERICA training to Scottish professionals. During the same time, Giedre worked on developing telemedicine good practice guidelines for substance use services in Scotland, and identified tele-interventions for addiction within the European context. These projects were funded by the Scottish Government and EMCDDA. Currently, Giedre is at the mid-point of her training as a Clinical Psychologist and in the past two years she has worked as Trainee Clinical Psychologists in CAMHS and Health settings. Her main interests are generational trauma and its effects on individuals and communities.