Centre for Wellbeing, Community and Inclusion
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Overview
The centre brings together professionals and researchers in physical and mental health, developmental and social issues, disabilities, including learning disabilities, digital inclusion, human wellbeing, social epidemiology, professional psychology and neuroscience.
The core mission of the research centre is to foster research collaborations among academics, practitioners and community groups, with the intent to improve physical and mental health, increase their sense of belonging, ameliorate their interaction with the environment and social context and ultimately enhance their general wellbeing.
Born in 2022, the centre gains its strength from affiliations with well-established not-for-profit social enterprises, research groups and centres like:
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Who we are
Co-directors
Janet Hoskin: Janet's research focuses on disability and in particular the experiences of people living with the rare life-limiting impairment Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). Her research has highlighted the lesser-known learning and communication challenges (and strengths!) linked to DMD, and she continues to explore the experience of living with a life limiting impairment for children and adults with DMD and their families.
Matteo Martini: his research focuses on pain perception and pain modulation by other sensory modalities. Other areas of research include body representation and bodily illusions, cognitive abilities in particular executive functions. Neuroimaging techniques like EEG and fNIRS can be included in his experimental designs.
Members
- Gulnar Ali: works on spirituality and existential health, mental health nursing, palliative care, medical anthropology.
- Ayse Burcin Baskurt: works on career calling, employee wellbeing, social support, work-family interface, leadership.
- Paula Booth: areas of expertise include attitudes and food and drink consumption, hydration and cognitive performance.
- Mary-Jane Budd: Mary-Jane's research focuses on the psychological effects of perimenopause and menopause including anxiety, cognitive dysfunction, and inequalities in access to information and treatment in menopause. Mary-Jane also has interests in meditation and cognition, and the neural underpinnings of coaching as an intervention.
- Tanya Cotier: works on disability, experiences of children, their family/parents/carers and siblings.
- Sonya Dineva: works on occupational attitudes, emotions and behaviours, flexible work schedules, stress and well-being at work, and the application of artificial intelligence to manage these.
- Ahmed Elgebaly: works on oncology, breast cancer, neurology.
- Candan Ertubey: Areas of expertise include improvement of wellbeing and health in the context of education, culture, and organisation. Assessment of efficacy of interventions in above contexts had been main interest in recent years (long term conditions and PTSD).
- Cynthia Fu: areas of expertise include big data in neuroimaging, brain regions affected by depression, application of machine learning to predict treatment response, and development of novel treatments, such as transcranial direct current stimulation and psychoanalysis.
- Andy Galbraith: works on exercise physiology and the role of exercise in improving health, wellbeing and performance.
- Jeremy Gilbert works on political and social theory with particular reference to ideas and practices of community and democracy.
- Seyed Ali Ghorashi: areas of expertise include artificial intelligence and machine learning in healthcare, telecommunications, Internet of Things (IoT), human activity and behaviour recognition.
- Andrea Giraldez-Hayes: works on arts and wellbeing, coaching psychology and positive education.
- Fahimeh Jafari: works on big data analytics, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning.
- Hanna Kampman: works on sports in wellbeing, acquired physical impairments, trauma informed sports coaching.
- Gosia Kwiatkowska: works on multimedia advocacy, non-verbal communication, advocacy, learning and teaching.
- Georgia Lockwood Estrin: works on child development, autism, global mental health, developmental psychology, neuroethics.
- Melanie Manning: Works on arts and wellbeing, safeguarding in a digital age and is the Founder of Freedom 2 (creative wellbeing programmes for teenage girls).
- Andrew Minnion: works on social media for people with learning disabilities.
- Mario Moya: works on language and cognition neurosciences and second language learning.
- Helen Murphy: areas of expertise include psychological health and wellbeing for individuals and groups.
- Tim Pascoe: Director of Impact - Catalyst In Communities.
- Trishna Patel: areas of interest include transdiagnostic and transtheoretical approaches to conceptualising/reducing psychological distress (i.e., anti-diagnosis), mechanisms of change during psychological therapy, shame/shame memories and ethics in research and practice.
- Lydia Pell: Interim Deputy Director Of Student Services.
- Elena Piccardi: areas of interest include contextual and individual differences in sensory sensitivity and seeking sensory input in populations with typical and atypical development.
- Andrew Ravenscroft: performs impactful and collaborative interdisciplinary research into critical and inclusive education, that typically realises and evaluates social innovations. Recent funded projects have focused on the intersection of: inclusive education; mental health and wellbeing; and, the criminal exploitation of vulnerable young people and the impact of youth violence.
- Anna Stone: areas of expertise include paranormal, religious belief, facial disfigurement.
- Paul Watts: works on individual and environmental influences on health, frailty in older adults.
- Katie Wright: research focuses on human wellbeing, gender and the life course, masculinities, intergenerational relations, transnational migration, refugee education, global inequalities and comparative education.
Postgraduate students
The centre welcomes applications for PhDs and Professional Doctorates.
We are interested in cross-disciplinary, practice-based research and creative projects that speak to our research areas.
For information, including bursaries, visit:
Alternatively, based on their expertise, you can directly contact one of the co-directors or members of the centre.
Events
- The Importance of Expectation in Pain: Experimental Modelling in Humans - Wednesday 23 March, 5-6pm, online
This talk will describe several human behavioural and neuroimaging experiments on expectation of pain onset and of pain offset in healthy subjects and how psychopathology and chronic pain alters these processes.
Featured project
A project implementing karate sessions for teenagers with the genetic muscle wasting impairment Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, exploring the importance of exercise for health and wellbeing.
Contact us
For more information, please contact CWCI co-directors
Dr Janet Hoskin: j.hoskin@uel.ac.uk, or
Dr Matteo Martini: m.martini@uel.ac.uk