Staff List
Dr Sarah Kirby is Programme Director for the PhD in Health Psychology Research and Professional Practice. Other members of staff involved in supervising trainees include Professor Cynthia Graham, Professor Lucy Yardley, Professor Christina Liossi, Dr Felicity Bishop, Dr Ingrid Muller, and Dr Laura Dennison. All these staff members are HCPC registered Health Psychologists and Chartered members of the BPS. Further information about each member of staff is given below.
Programme Director:
Dr Sarah Kirby
Dr Sarah Kirby is a Health Psychologist and Associate Professor at the University of Southampton. After completing her undergraduate degree in Psychology at Staffordshire University in 1998, she spent two years working with children and becoming a qualified play worker, followed by a brief stint in the civil service. She then decided to return to academia where she completed the MSc in Health Psychology at the University of Southampton in 2002. She then undertook stage 2 training following the university route, completing a part-time PhD in Health Psychology Research and Professional Practice at the University of Southampton, graduating in 2007. During this time she also worked part-time at the University as a teaching and research assistant. She continued working at the University of Southampton in various post-doc roles and became a Lecturer in Psychology in 2012, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2016. Sarah is a HCPC registered Health Psychologist and a Chartered Member of the BPS (CPsychol). She is also a full member of the Division of Health Psychology (DHP), and a member of the BPS DHP training committee.
Dr Christina Liossi
Christina Liossi is a Chartered Psychologist and Health Psychologist. Christina is a Senior Lecturer in Health Psychology at the University of Southampton where she is also the Director for postgraduate research programmes in Psychology. Before joining the School of Psychology in Southampton, Christina worked as an academic at the University of Wales Swansea and the University of the West of England, Bristol; and as a clinician at the Department of Child Health, Singleton Hospital, Swansea, the Bristol Oncology Centre and the Children’s Hospital Aglaia Kyriakou in Athens, Greece. Her research on pain focuses on three intertwined themes a) the cognitive and affective neuroscience of pain, b) the development of theory driven psychological interventions for the management of acute and chronic pain in children and adults, c) the evaluation of the efficacy and effectiveness of psychological interventions in paediatric and adult pain management. Other research interests include psycho-oncology and neuropsychology. Christina has presented research and clinical workshops in Australia, France, Sweden, Greece and the USA and has written numerous papers, chapters and a book on procedure-related cancer pain in children (Radcliffe Medical Press, 2002).
Professor Cynthia Graham
Cynthia Graham obtained her Master’s degree from the University of Glasgow, Scotland and her Ph.D. in 1990 from McGill University. From 1996-2004 she was an Assistant Professor at Indiana University. She is currently a Professor in Sexual and Reproductive Health in the Department of Psychology at the University of Southampton, a Research Fellow at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, and a visiting Research Fellow at the Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention, Indiana University. She is Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Sex Research and is an editorial board member for the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy and the International Journal of Sexual Health. She is a Chartered Psychologist, a HCPC registered Health Psychologist, an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Fellow of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, and a member of the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Workgroup for the DSM-5. She was elected President of the International Academy of Sex Research in 2009. Dr Graham has published over 100 articles and book chapters on a range of topics including sexual problems, methodological issues in recall data on sexual behaviour, gender differences in sexuality, the relationship between mood and sexuality, factors affecting sexual arousal in women, and asexuality.
Professor Lucy Yardley
Lucy Yardley is a HCPC registered Health Psychologist and a Chartered member of the BPS. Her current programme of research uses mixed methods to address the question of how best to integrate digital support for self-management of health with existing health promotion and healthcare services. This question is being addressed by the development and evaluation of numerous web-based healthcare interventions funded by over £10 million from the UK research councils, NIHR, medical charities and EC; these include interventions to support weight management, reduction of infection transmission and antibiotic over-use, and self-management of numerous long-term health conditions.
Dr Felicity Bishop
Felicity Bishop is a Chartered Psychologist and Health Psychologist. Felicity is an Associate Professor in Health Psychology at the University of Southampton where she is also the Programme Director for the MSc in Health Psychology. She has an MA in Experimental Psychology from the University of Oxford (The Queen’s College) and an MSc in Health Psychology from the University of Southampton. In 2006 she obtained her PhD in Psychology from the University of Southampton. Following some postdoctoral work she moved to Primary Care and Population Sciences within the Faculty of Medicine to take up an Arthritis Research UK Career Development Fellowship. From 2008 to 2011 she undertook a programme of research, funded under the Fellowship, using mixed methods to investigate psychosocial aspects of acupuncture for low back pain. During this period she was also a visiting researcher at Harvard University, developing a programme of work around lay perspectives on placebo effects. In 2012 Felicity returned to Psychology at the University of Southampton to take up a Lectureship in Health Psychology. She is now pursuing an interdisciplinary programme of mixed methods research around contextual effects in health care, encompassing topics including: ethical, scientific and lay perspectives on use of placebos in clinical practice and research; uptake and adherence to treatments for back pain; applications and elaborations of the common-sense model of illness perception; utilisation of complementary and alternative medicines and psychosocial mediators of their effectiveness; mixing qualitative and quantitative methods.
Dr Ingrid Muller
Ingrid Muller is a Chartered Psychologist, Health Psychologist, and Lecturer in Health Psychology at the University of Southampton. Ingrid completed a MSc in Health Psychology from the University of Sussex before undertaking the Stage 2 training at the University of Southampton by completing a PhD in Health Psychology Research and Professional Practice. Ingrid’s research focusses on understanding and developing interventions to support self-management of long-term conditions, with a focus on developing and evaluating digital behaviour change interventions. In 2014 she was awarded an NIHR post-doctoral fellowship in primary care research, and in 2016 returned to the psychology department as a Lecturer in Health psychology. Ingrid has presented her work at national and international conferences and regularly publishes in digital health and medical journals.
Dr Laura Dennison
Dr Laura Dennison is a Lecturer within Psychology at the University of Southampton. Laura completed her BSc in Psychology at the University of Warwick and then an MSc and PhD in Health Psychology at the University of Southampton. She currently works as a Lecturer in the Academic Unit of Psychology (Centre for Applications of Health Psychology research group), and is a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society and a Registered Health Psychologist with the Health and Care Professionals Council.