Director, Psylife
Reader in Epidemiology
James kirkbride
Welcome to the PsyLife research group website, founded in the Division of Psychiatry at UCL in 2014 by me, James Kirkbride. We are a dynamic, diverse, supportive and growing research team who investigate how social and environmental factors affect the risk of mental health problems using epidemiological methods.
The group is founded on the principles of research-led learning. This means that all learning takes place in the context of application to real-world problems we aim to solve related to population mental health. All students and early career researchers are trained to develop their skills, knowledge and expertise in social and psychiatric epidemiology by tackling research questions of national and international importance. We aim to publish all suitable research in peer-reviewed publications, and provide PsyLife group members with critical, transferable skills as they continue on their path to independence.
We are committed to academic excellence in social and psychiatric epidemiology to identify and prevent the social and environmental causes of mental health problems. We encourage and promote open science and translation of our findings into actionable public mental health and policy, wherever possible. We involve the public in our research in a variety of ways.
On this page you can find out more about our current team as well as alumni from our group.
Staff
Clicking on our images will take you to our UCL profiles
James B. Kirkbride
Director, Reader in Epidemiology
Jean Stafford
BRC Research Fellow
Keltie McDonald
Research fellow
PhD students
Ka-Young Ban
PhD student
Zeijing Shao
PhD student
(Department of Statistical Sciences)
Odessa Hamilton
Rotation PhD student
(ESRC DTP)
Humma Andleeb
Rotation PhD student (WELLCOME MH)
Nathalie Rich
Rotation PhD student
(ESRC DTP)
Placement students
Placements are offered to MSc students on our Division’s MSc courses on an ad hoc basis. This provides students with extracurricular voluntary research experience during their course.
Dan Pittaway
Msc clinical mental health sciences
Wing Tung Chung
MSC CLINICAL MENTAL HEALTH SCIENCES
Alumni
Postdoctoral
PhD
Visiting researchers
- Dr Anna-Clara Hollander (Karolinska Institutet), 2015
- Dr Daria Monteforte (University of Verona), 2016
- Dr Martina Rattin (University of Verona), 2018
RESEARCH ASSISTANTS
- Rayanne Jean-Baptiste Bastien (DEPICt study), 2019-20
- Hannah Ker (PsyMaptic-A study), 2019
- Rebecca Dliwayo (PsyMaptic-A study), 2017-18
MSC
UCL MSc students on Clinical Mental Health Sciences, unless otherwise indicated.
- 2019-20: Angela Chase, Merle Schlief
- 2018-19: Zsofi Dombi, Nura Bejani, Felicity Callender (LSHTM), Alfonso González-Valderrama (IoPPN)
- 2017-18: Dafni Katsampa, Sarah Ledden, James Terhune, Verity Fox, Shereen Charles (UCL PALS)
- 2016-17: Syeda Akhter, Samantha Harris
- 2015-16: Lucy Richardson, Tom Steare, Dawid Gondek, Mohammadi Abdolali
- 2014-15: Ho-Yun Lee, Lisa Laeber, Anita Chandra
Prospective students
PhD Students
James is happy to accept potential PhD students to study in the PsyLife groups. Potential students should have an interest in the epidemiology of psychotic disorders, and using quantitative techniques to answer questions related to the social determinants of these disorders. Students who wish to learn and apply causal inference methods in epidemiology are particularly encouraged to get in touch. An MSc in Epidemiology, Public Health, Biostatistics or related disciplines is particularly desirable.
Interested students should send an outline of their proposed PhD idea to James in the first instance. Further details about studying for a PhD within the UCL Division of Psychiatry can be found here. Students will normally be expected to secure funding for their PhD separately. A number of competitive scholarships are offered by major funders.
You can find details of current PhD students and other researchers working in the group here.
MSc Students
MSc students on the Division of Psychiatry’s Clinical Mental Health Sciences or Mental Health Sciences Research programmes can select a research project offered by Dr Kirkbride or another member of the PsyLife team each year. Projects are usually advertised on the MSc in late December each year, for uptake from around March onwards. Students who have their own research project ideas are welcome to get in touch with Dr Kirkbride at an early stage to discussion potential supervision.
MSc students on other courses who are interested in being supervised by a member of the PsyLife group for their dissertation project should also get in touch with Dr Kirkbride at an early stage to discuss their ideas.
MSc students typically work on a real research question as part of the PsyLife group’s commitment to research-led learning. They will be embedded into the team, and contribute to regular team meetings during their placement. Wherever possible, we encourage and support the publication of MSc dissertations as peer-reviewed research. Some examples are given on this page.