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Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Researcher
- Postdoctoral Researcher / University of Oxford
Alex is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Neuroscience, Ethics & Society team (NEUROSEC) and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and the Humanities (WEH), most recently working on the MRC Pathfinder project which aims to harness health informatics and data science to improve mental health outcomes. Alex's current research focuses primarily on ethical issues in mental health big data, and ethics of early intervention. Alex also established and co-Chairs the Mental Health Data Ethics Leadership group with Prof. Ilina Singh. Previously, Alex worked on the ROADMAP project, an EU-wide consortium project which aimed to improve outcomes for people with Alzheimer's Disease.
Prior to Oxford, Alex held teaching and research positions at the University of Bristol Centre for Ethics in Medicine, as well as research positions at University College London Medical School Research Department for Medical Education, and the University of East London Institute for Health and Human Development. Alex has also been a visiting tutor at the Yale University Summer Institute in Bioethics.
Alex has a PhD in Bioethics from the University of Bristol. His thesis focused on the philosophical, ethical, and social implications of human enhancement technologies. His thesis focused on the philosophical, ethical, and social implications of human enhancement technologies. Subsequently, via a Wellcome Trust Ethics and Society Small Grant, he took forward the conclusions of his thesis, examining the relation between human enhancement and public health, which remains a significant research interest. Alongside this Alex's interests include neuroethics and neurotechnologies, ethics in psychiatry and mental health, ethics in dementia, ethics in artificial intelligence, philosophy of mind, philosophy of medicine, epistemology - in particular debates in realism and anti-realism, and interdisciplinary methodology in applied and empirical ethics.
Before returning to academia to take his PhD Alex spent three years working in patient advocacy and policy research in genetics, and prior to this he took a BA in Philosophy and an MA in Healthcare Ethics at the University of Leeds.
Job Titles:
- Research Manager
- Research Manager / University of Oxford
Alexandra Almeida is the NEUROSEC Research Manager; Alexandra is responsible for managing two core projects led by Prof. Ilina Singh; Becoming Good: Early Intervention and Moral Development in Child Psychiatry (BeGOOD) and the Global Initiative in Neuropsychiatric GenEthics (NeuroGenE).
In the run-up to the Global Ministerial Mental Health Summit 2019, Alexandra co-led the Youth Campaign for the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development, alongside Dr. Gabriela Pavarini.
Alexandra enjoys managing projects, and has organised a number of seminars, symposiums, and science outreach events, in addition to fundraising campaigns for medical causes. Before undertaking her role as NEUROSEC Research Manager, Alexandra completed a PhD in Developmental Biology and was a Postdoctoral Research in Physiology at the University of Cambridge.
Job Titles:
- Student
- Student Citizens EIE
Arianna is a Wellcome Trust-funded DPhil student at Oxford, supervised by Prof. Ilina Singh (Department of Psychiatry) and Dr Nina Hallowell (Ethox Centre). Within the BeGOOD team, her research is an empirical bioethics study situated at the intersection between the ethics of neuropsychiatric genomics, the scholarship on biological citizenship, and the literature on childhood participation. Her thesis uses autism genomics as a case study to investigate the moral attitudes that young people, i.e. ‘developing' genomic citizens, hold in the context of the application of genomic science to psychiatric conditions. Arianna developed the methodological design of her research in consultation with the NeurOx Young People's Advisory Group, which she has contributed to set up as part of Citizens: EIE, and she conducted focus groups with young people between 13-18 years old, recruited from schools and youth groups in the UK
Arianna holds an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milan (2014); an MA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics of Health from University College London (2015); and an Erasmus Mundus MSc in Bioethics from KU Leuven (2016).
Coleman is a graduate student working on the COVID-19 Peer Support Project, examining adolescent response to peer supported intervention during isolation.
Coleman is a recent graduate of Columbia University where he earned a BA in English Literature and Psychology. He is currently reading for an MSc in Clinical and Therapeutic Neuroscience at the University of Oxford.
Coleman's research interests focus on adolescent mental health, specifically depression and anxiety, and the effects of community engagement and early adverse life experiences on these disorders. He is also excited about developing accessible mental health education programming in underserved areas as well as reducing general stigma on the subject.
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Researcher
- Postdoctoral Researcher / University of Oxford
- Postdoctoral Researcher Citizens EIE
Gabriela is a Postdoctoral Researcher on the BeGOOD project, working to develop and lead Citizens: EIE. She completed a PhD in Psychology at the Centre for Music and Science, University of Cambridge, investigating the effects of movement synchrony on human emotions and social relationships. Alongside her PhD, Gabriela co-led the Cambridge Moral Psychology Group; a platform facilitating interdisciplinary exchange in the field of morality.
Gabriela has an MPhil in Social and Developmental Psychology from the University of Cambridge, and a BA in Psychology from the Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil.
Gabriela's research interests lie at the intersection of moral psychology, emotions and social relationships. She is excited by the opportunity to study the ethics of early intervention programmes, and getting young people involved in research and policy.
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant
- Research Assistant Citizens EIE
Geoffrey is supporting the COVID-19 Peer Support Project aimed at co-designing and testing the effectiveness of a peer-to-peer intervention to help adolescents cope with moral distress during COVID-19, and the BeGOOD Citizens Early Intervention Ethics project.
Geoffrey holds a BA in Psychological and Behavioural Sciences from The University of Cambridge and an MSc in Behaviour Change from University College London. Through use of the Behaviour Change Wheel, his MSc research project systematically explored the barriers and facilitators of adolescent engagement with online counselling and identified strategies to optimise engagement. This project was completed in partnership with The Mix, a UK-based charity that provides essential mental health support to under 25s.
Job Titles:
- Financial Economist
- Student
Gulamabbas is passionate about combining multiple disciplines to develop new approaches to mental health treatment, drawing upon his community work over the last decade, and recent postgraduate studies in psychology, neuroscience, Islamic studies & history and Christian theology. His previous research includes; investigating EEG neural correlates of dhikr (mindfulness from the Islamic tradition) and empirical studies on how ʾakhlāq practices (ethical and psychological teachings from Islam) may contribute to treating depression and anxiety.
Gulamabbas is a financial economist by profession; having graduated in Economics & Econometrics, he was awarded the Chartered Financial Analyst designation, and, outside of his research, manages an investment firm he founded twelve years ago.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Neuroscience & Society / University of Oxford
- Professor of Neuroscience & Society at the University
- Professor of Neuroscience & Society at the University of Oxford
Ilina is Professor of Neuroscience & Society at the University of Oxford, where she holds a joint appointment between the Department of Psychiatry and the Faculty of Philosophy (Oxford Centre for Neuroethics and Uehiro Centre). Her work examines the psychosocial and ethical implications of advances in biomedicine and neuroscience for young people and families. This reflects a longstanding commitment to bringing the first person experiences of children and young people into ethical evaluation, clinical decision-making and policy-making.
In 2015, Ilina received a 5 year Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award for a study entitled: Becoming Good: Early Intervention and Moral Development in Child Psychiatry. Past projects include ADHD VOICES, Neuroenhancement Responsible Research and Innovation; and the Urban Brain Project.
Ilina has contributed to various scientific and policy groups, including the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. More recently, Ilina was part of the expert working group representing children and young people for the UK Department of Health 10 year strategy report, ‘A framework for mental health research'. She is a co-chair of the Ethics Advisory Board for the EU-AIMS project on autism treatments and is an expert advisor for the National Autism Project.
Ilina has published widely in eminent journals, including Nature, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Social Science and Medicine, and the American Journal of Bioethics. She is the lead editor of BioPrediction, Biomarkers and Bad Behavior: Scientific, Ethical and Legal Challenges (Oxford Series in Neuroscience, Law, and Philsophy. Oxford University Press, 2013), and a co-editor of Global ADHD (John Hopkins University Press, 2017). She is a founding editor of the journal BioSocieties and a member of the AJOB Neuroscience and Qualitative Psychology editorial boards.
Ilina received her BA and MA from the University of Pennsylvania, and her PhD from Harvard. In 2013, Ilina was elected as a Fellow of the Hastings Center, an honour awarded to individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has informed scholarship and public understanding of complex ethical issues in health, health care, life sciences research and the environment.
Ilina Singh is Professor of Neuroscience & Society at the University of Oxford, where she holds a joint appointment between the Department of Psychiatry and the Faculty of Philosophy (Oxford Centre for Neuroethics and Uehiro Centre). She is also Co-Director of the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities
Jessica is a DPhil student in Psychiatry at the University of Oxford. This DPhil is funded by a Oxford-MRC DTP Studentship and Oxford-Hoffmann Graduate Scholarship.
Jessica's research explores how schools use "Ed-Tech" to monitor for suicide risk, focusing specifically on themes of risk and responsibility. She is supervised by Professor Ilina Singh and Dr. Thomas Douglas and affiliated with both the Department of Psychiatry and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities.
Previously Jessica worked as a research assistant for the BeGOOD project at NEUROSEC in the Department of Psychiatry. You can learn more about the project at www.begoodeie.com or on Instagram/Twitter at @BeGOOD_EI
Kiran is a Research Assistant on the NeuroGenE project, where she is responsible for managing grants, supporting the methodology and research strategy, as well as web design and the twitter handle. In addition, Kiran contributes research to the stigma component of the project through a scoping review and empirical research in Ghana. Her research interests include understanding conceptualisations of disabilities, investigating factors that contribute to stigma, and contextual research for imp in the field of disability and development.
Her current research focuses on attitudes towards persons with mental health, neurodevelopmental, and neurological disorders. This encompasses many components including the healthcare streams of traditional healing, ritual healing, and modern biomedicine, all of which have differing ethical issues and societal impacts. Kiran takes a multidisciplinary approach in her methodology intertwining development, psychology, and anthropology. She has completed fieldwork in Kenya on attitudes and empathy towards persons with disabilities. In collaboration with Dr Caesar Atuire, she has developed a contextual attitude tool to capture frameworks of conceptions towards psychosis in Ghana.
Kiran was awarded her Masters in International Development from the University of Birmingham in 2017. Prior to this, she completed her Bachelor degree in Psychology which included a year studying Anthropology at the Universität Heidelberg.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder & Chief Experience Officer at Talk2U
Lu Suárez Battán has more than 15 years of experience working in knowledge-based services focused on strategic planning and experience design for triple-bottom-line tech startups and providing services to governments and multinationals. She is a certified professional ontological coach and accompanies individuals, teams, and ventures in defining, planning, and implementing transformational changes. In 2020, she joined Talk2U as Chief Experience Officer to design meaningful experiences that boost engagement and enable change by connecting state of the art frameworks and technology to the stories.
Job Titles:
- Creative Director
- Co - Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Talk2U
- Co - Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Talk2U / University of Oxford
Nico lás Ferrario is creative director, screenwriter and writer. He is also an advertising veteran, a behavioural science enthusiast and a recent member of NatGeo Explorers. He has more than 15 years of experience working in the global storytelling and advertising industry for public and private organisations around America, Europe and Asia for which he has received a large number of international creative awards. In 2018, he co-founded Talk2U acting as Chief Executive Officer where he unleashes his creativity to write powerful stories that encourage intelligent conversations for positive change.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor, University of Brasília
Taylor is an MSc student at Oxford, supervised by Dr. Gabriela Pavarini. His research project within the BeGOOD team is focused on adolescent perspectives regarding mental health data sharing.
Taylor received a Bachelor's degree from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, USA (2015). While an undergraduate, Taylor worked as a research assistant in Dr. Sarah Kamens' Young Adult Mental Health (YAMH) Lab where he focused on Duration of Untreated Psychosis (DUP) and college-aged students' experiences with mental health resources.
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant
- Research Assistant / University of Oxford
- Research Assistant Citizens EIE
Vanessa is supporting the BeGood Citizen's: EIE projects working with young people advisory groups to investigate moral attitudes to, and judgments about, a range of early intervention strategies to manage moral and behavioural development and mental health ethics. Vanessa will also be working on projects with the NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre Patients Active in Research Group involving young people.
Prior to joining the Department, Vanessa worked at Oxford Brookes in the Developmental Psychology group as a Research Assistant and Test Administrator on a standardisation project for Intelligence and Development Scales (IDS-2) and projects involving assessments of handwriting and movement in children and young people. She previously spent 20 years involved in healthcare communications.
Vanessa attained an MSc in Psychology from Oxford Brookes University, with her thesis investigating the effects of cognitive loads on goal-directed memory functioning in adolescents. She also holds a BSc in Animal Biology from The University of Birmingham and MSc in Veterinary Parasitology from The University of Liverpool.
Vanessa is interested in researching the psychological and cognitive impact of early interventions on development of children and young people. She is interested in both experimental and applied aspects of psychological science and improving the mental health outlook in children and young people.