Barbara is a full-time Senior Research Fellow at the School of Health Sciences, University of Brighton. Her current work focuses on evaluating the HeadStart programme in Blackpool. HeadStart is a multi-agency programme, funded by the National Lottery Fund, aiming to increase resilience in young people and improve mental well-being by building a resilience revolution across the whole of Blackpool. Barbara completed her PhD at the Spectrum Centre for Mental Health Research, Lancaster University in 2018. Her PhD project focused on understanding the personal recovery concept and recovery experiences of people with bipolar disorder. While conducting her PhD research, Barbara worked as an academic researcher on both public and mental health research projects working directly with individuals with severe mental health problems, such as bipolar disorder, and their relatives. Prior to her PhD, Barbara worked in clinical and community mental health settings and in voluntary capacity with children, adolescents and adults with caring responsibilities and/or mental health problems.

Barbara’s primary interest lies in mental health research and approaching mental health problems in a holistic way, considering a wide range of experiences of individuals. She is passionate about preventing mental health problems and improving mental health services, interventions and outcomes for service users and their families. 

She conducts translational and co-productive mental health research, focusing on psychosocial approaches to prevention and treatment of mental health problems in young people and adults. Her research extends to areas of personalised psychological interventions and mental health care, personal and meaningful outcome assessment, social prescribing, psychosocial determinants of health, health inequalities, co-production through community-university partnership and taking a social justice approach to promoting resilience and mental wellbeing and preventing mental health problems.