Profile

I was born in England, and moved to Canada with my parents and brother when I was a little girl. I was raised in Canada for 15 years, and moved back to the UK when I was 21.  I now live with my husband Luke, and our Cocker Spaniel Poppy, in Bristol UK.

My husband and I are renovating our very old house, and planning lots of trips around the world  – we’ll be travelling to Canada this year, and Hawaii in 2018. I also want to travel to South America, Japan and the Artic before I turn 40.  I love riding my push bike, I’m trying to train Poppy to travel in a trailer so that I can take her with me on bike adventures.  I’m also planning on cycling to France next year with Poppy and Luke.

I’m an animal rights activist, and I am a vegan – so this means that I don’t eat any animal products, for example milk, meats, or cheese. I try my hardest not to use products and medicines that have been tested on animals. I started eating less meat when we got Poppy and I realised how smart she was.

I studied psychology at University from 2006 to 2011, I did a degree and a masters focusing on how to help people improve their mental and physical health. I also worked at a mental health hospital during this time, and helped people who had illnesses like schizophrenia or personality disorders.

In 2011 I did a PhD in Tobacco Epidemiology. Epidemiology means ‘a disease that affects a large population’, so diseases like HIV or Ebola are known as ‘epidemics’. Because smoking tobacco is so bad for you, it is considered an epidemic.

Typically I use statistical models to analyse numerical data that measures peoples’ mental health and smoking behaviour.

My research to date has found that:

Stopping smoking is linked to improvements in mental health, and these improvements are similar to taking anti-depressant drugs.
Taking medications to help quit smoking like nicotine patches and Champix improve chances of long-term cessation.
But these stop smoking medications are not as effective in people with mental health disorders.

My current project for the next three years aims to:

Design a treatment to help people with depression to quit smoking.
This smoking treatment will be integrated into psychological care for depression.
We will test the smoking treatment to see it can increase the chances of quitting smoking.

Typical day:  I cycle to work at 6:30 am, and I’m at my desk with cereal and a cuppa at 7:30 – Early bird catches the worm! My research goes in phases – so over the last few months most of my days have been spent analysing data and writing up scientific reports. I leave work at about 3:30-4pm.

Some days I get to work from home in my loft room office , these are my favourite days as I get to spend time with Poppy, and there are some amazing views from my loft room window.

Soon I will be spending a lot of time interviewing smokers with depression about why they smoke and how we can help them quit. I will then analyse the meaning of information they give me.

I regularly travel abroad to do presentations at conferences and meet other scientists in my field. This year I’ve been to Italy, and I will be meeting with collaborators in Australia this summer.