Professor Lucy Bowes
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Professor Lucy Bowes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Experimental Psychology and the Principal Investigator of the oRANGE Lab. Lucy graduated with a BA Hons in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University in 2004. She was awarded a PhD in Behavioural Genetics in 2011 from the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. Lucy is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the Department of Experimental Psychology, and was appointed as a Fellow of Magdalen College in 2014. She tutors in prelims Psychology and Part 1 Individual Differences and Psychological Disorders. Lucy has received awards from the Medical Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council, UK. Her research on school bullying has been supported by the Jacobs Foundation, and her current work on resilience to harsh, non-supportive parenting is supported by a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship.
Lucy’s research focuses on the impact of early life stress on psychological and behavioural development. In particular, Lucy has focused on the effects of victimization on young people’s adjustment and wellbeing. Her research integrates methods from social epidemiology, developmental psychology and behavioural genetics in order to understand the complex genetic and environmental influences that promote resilience to victimization and early life stress. The aim of her work is to guide intervention work by identifying protective factors that promote positive outcomes among vulnerable children. Email: lucy.bowes@psy.ox.ac.uk |
Dr. Julia Badger
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Dr Julia Badger is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Experimental Psychology. Julia is also a Lecturer for the Department and the Psychology Tutor for Harris Manchester College. Her work in the oRANGE lab focuses on using virtual reality technologies to investigate how adolescents respond psychologically and physiologically to bullying situations. The work assesses whether adolescents at risk of depression, anxiety and / or psychosis are more likely to exhibit hostile interpretations and heightened reactions. This work forms part of a larger study into factors associated with resilience and mental health. Julia is also part of the first U.K. multi-site KiVa (anti-bullying) programme research study to evaluate the effectiveness of KiVa in reducing bullying & victimisation in primary schools.
Julia also leads a global virtual reality network (VR-Psych) to link researchers, practitioners and developers working with applied virtual reality. She graduated with a BSc Hons in Human Psychology and an MRes in Psychological Research Methods with a specialisation in Cognitive Neuroscience. In 2011, she was awarded a PhD in Child Development from Aston University. Following her PhD she worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher in a Family Assessment Service based at the Anna Freud Centre, London, following up the psychological well-being of children who had gone through court proceedings. Since moving to Oxford in 2013, Julia’s work has been primarily focused on co-developing educational tools to identify children’s academic potential and to work with those children who are underachieving at school relative to their potential. Julia (nom de plume Julia Tedd) published her first children's book - Night-time Cat - in 2019 and her second children's book - Box Cat - in 2020. They are the first two books in a planned series which aims to subtly expose children to complex grammar structures to encourage early implicit acquisition (see juliatedd.com). Email: julia.badger@psy.ox.ac.uk Twitter: @JuliaRBadger LinkedIn: JuliaBadger |
Dr. Aoife O'Higgins
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Dr Aoife O'Higgin's research focusses on understanding the mechanisms which lead to poor educational and psychological outcomes for people who have experience multiple adversities in childhood, including children in care and refugee children. Specifically, she is interested in identifying risk and protective factors to inform the development of evidence based social interventions. Her work draws on methods from social epidemiology, developmental psychology, evaluation and social work.
She is currently working on a project funded by the Calleva Foundation through Magdalen College, with Professor Lucy Bowes (Department of Experimental Psychology) and Professor Siân Pooley (Department of History). The project charts life course psychological, social and health outcomes and their comorbidity for children exposed to interpersonal trauma, taking into account other forms of adversity. They aim to highlight the mechanisms that account for variability in later functioning. She is also committed to knowledge exchange to bridge the gap between research, policy and practice in the local community. You can find her on Twitter @ohigginsaoife, where she leads a monthly chat called #CareConvos. She is also vice-chair of governors in a local primary school, she leads a project on maternal mental health in Oxfordshire and she supports the Oxford Refugee Health Initiative. You can find more information about her work here A full list of her publications is here Email: aoife.ohiggins@magd.ox.ac.uk |
Urška Košir
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Urška Košir is a DPhil student in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University. Her doctoral work focuses on the psychological adaptation of young cancer survivors. Urška is exploring the mechanisms of psychopathology in young survivors to answer questions such as why some survivors become depressed, anxious, or experience PTSD, and in what ways biology, environment, and personal characteristics interact in the development of mental health disorders. Urška’s employs mixed methods, from longitudinal data set analyses to qualitative examination of young survivors’ experiences. She hopes that her results will lead to the development of novel screening approaches as well as preventative measures in pediatric oncology settings.
Prior to moving to Oxford, Urška obtained a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Yale University. Most of her work at Yale fell under the umbrella of mental health; from understanding autism to the exploration of depression symptom clusters and how they might be utilized in prescribing antidepressant medication. Upon graduating, Urška worked as a research assistant in a psychosis lab at Yale Medical School in the Department of Psychiatry. Urška’s primary occupation was data collection and analysis for a clinical trial that explored the use of Naltrexone as weight gain prevention for patients with psychotic disorders. Website: https://urskakosir.netlify.com/ Email: urska.kosir@psy.ox.ac.uk |
Carolina Guzman Holst
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Carolina Guzman Holst is a DPhil student in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University. Her doctoral work focuses on building a contemporary model of risk and resilience for adolescent peer victimisation using longitudinal analysis and experimental design. Specifically, she is interested in understanding how social, emotional and cognitive mechanisms interact with key biological systems to predict functioning in adolescents with a history of childhood bullying. To this end, she is using virtual reality to identify specific risk and protective pathways between bullying and psychological outcomes such as depression and anxiety. Her goal is to establish mechanisms that can be used to promote resilient outcomes across the life course and inform interventions for vulnerable adolescents.
Carolina graduated with a Bachelor of Science from Brown University and a Master of Science in Psychological Research from Oxford University. Her current DPhil work forms part of the “Changing Lives” project funded by the Calleva Foundation, which seeks to understand the life-long impact of early-life adversity and identify risk and protective factors that contribute to resilience across the life-course. Email: carolina.guzmanholst@magd.ox.ac.uk |
Mirela Zaneva
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Mirela Zaneva is a DPhil student in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University. Her doctoral work focuses on applying advanced statistical methods from a range of disciplines, such as social epidemiology, behavioral genetics and economics, in order to elucidate the underlying mechanisms and factors contributing to adolescent mental health and wellbeing. To this end, Mirela conducts analyses on diverse cross-sectional, longitudinal and panel datasets. Mirela graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of Pennsylvania and a Research Master’s in Psychology from the University of Amsterdam. Mirela enjoys interdisciplinary work and drawing connections across academic disciplines. Her research experience includes work in neurocriminology, computational linguistics, behavioral ecology, public health and financial consulting. She is always open to collaborations – get in touch! Email: mirela.zaneva@psy.ox.ac.uk |
Emily Mcgann
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Emily Mcgann is the Oxford University administrator for the KiVa (wellbeing and antibullying) programme as part of the Stand Together trial. Her role predominantly centres on recruitment and organising the vast amounts of information required to run a large multi-site study. Emily’s path to the oRANGE lab has been circuitous. Graduating from Cardiff University with a BSc in Biology and completing an MPhil in Biosciences (Genetics) from the same University she was employed as the receptionist for the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford. Here she was able to learn about the vast array of research being conducted within the department. She is passionate about all forms of research that helps to promote mental well-being, particularly projects that bridge the gap between research and practical interventions or policy changes. Emily volunteers with a local mental health charity and is also looking into training as a psycho-dynamic therapist. Email: emily.butcher@psy.ox.ac.uk |
Naomi Rose
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Naomi Rose is a Research Assistant in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. Within the oRANGE lab, Naomi supports Oxford’s branch of the multi-site Stand Together trial, evaluating the effectiveness of the KiVa anti-bullying programme.
Before joining the oRANGE lab, Naomi was a researcher within the Language, Literacy and Psycholinguistics research group at Nottingham Trent University investigating orthographic awareness and spelling skills of children with Developmental Language Disorder. Naomi is a graduate member of the British Psychological Society following her BSc in Experimental Psychology and Philosophy from the University of Bristol, and a member of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. Alongside her MSc in Speech and Language Therapy at Manchester Metropolitan University, Naomi worked as a Research Assistant at LuCiD (The ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development). Naomi is particularly interested in interdisciplinary projects bridging research and practice. Email: naomi.rose@psy.ox.ac.uk |
Previous lab members
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Dr. Michelle Degli Esposti
Michelle completed her DPhil in Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, in 2019. Her DPhil was part of an innovative interdisciplinary project, combining History and Psychology, and investigating Childhood Adversity and Life-time Resilience. Her particular research focus was on better understanding life-course pathways of resilience following childhood maltreatment. |
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Dr. Charlotte Booth
Charlotte completed her DPhil in Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, in 2019. Her DPhil was based on the individual differences in environmental sensitivity. She was particularly interested in understanding the relationship between environmental stress and mental health outcomes, and the individual difference factors that moderate this relationship including personality factors and genotypic factors. She used data from the CogBIAS longitudinal study to investigate risk and resilience pathways to mental health outcomes in a cohort of 500 adolescents. |
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Dr. Elizabeth Braithwaite
Elizabeth completed her DPhil in Psychiatry, University of Oxford, in 2015. Her D.Phil research focused on the effects of maternal depression during pregnancy on fetal and infant development. Her current research focuses on the effects of early life stress on the development of later mental health difficulties, and aims to further understand the biological mechanisms that underpin the development of psychological difficulties following stress exposure, and to identify factors which may protect against the development of such mental health difficulties in the context of early life stress. |