Counselling, Psychotherapy and Applied Social Sciences

Student Research and Potential Supervision

Counselling, Psychotherapy and Applied Social Sciences is a small subject area, which specialises in qualitative, reflexive and critical research approaches.

We can only admit research students whose proposed project lies within the scope of our research expertise. It is therefore very important that you find out about our research expertise and discuss your proposal with one of our supervisors before applying.

Information about our research expertise

Supervision and proposal

Consider which members of our academic staff are best placed to supervise your proposed project. You can do this by reviewing the academic profiles on our webpages. Here you will find a list of our academics organised by subject area, with details on their research interests and supervision capacity. This will allow you to align your research proposal with a suitable potential supervisor. Contact information for our staff can be found on their profiles. 

Staff profiles

Before you apply you need to prepare an outline research proposal. A draft version of this outline should be discussed with your prospective supervisor.

Read the specific guidance to prepare your outline proposal

Student Research 

Katherine Porter 

An exploratory study of Bion’s concept of ‘attacks on linking’ and its effect on ‘learning from experience’ in young people in special schools, the impact for learning and the development of Self. 
Mounira Aldousari 
Being A Counsellor in Kuwait, Challenges, and Aspirations in the light of Stigma.
Jay Myles 
Darkest before dawn: a research-practitioner’s auto-ethnographic investigation into her own experience as a client in therapy
Keith Evans 
Coming into Being: the significance of Pre- and Perinatal experiences on our relationality and meaningmaking processes throughout our lives
Mia Zielinska 
Maternal Preoccupation and Trauma to the Mother’s Sense of Self: When Dyadic Development is Suspended, Delayed, or Regressed
Georgi Gill 
Articulating Uncertainty: exploring the role of multiple sclerosis patients’ autoethnographic poems in dialogue with medical teams
Olukemi Amala 
Narratives from the wheelchair
Duncan Roebuck 
How newly qualified therapists experience the transition into practice 
Sharan Collins 
The role of shame in the silence of trauma
Audrey Neill 
The use of fiction to develop our understanding of various character styles as conceptualised through characterological and psychoanalytic theories of personality.
Kelly Stewart 
The Intergenerational Impact of Suicide
Moniq Mabasa Muyargas 
Navigating and Negotiating Identity while Aging: Narratives of Aging Gay Men and Lesbians for Health Social Justice
Karen Kaufman 
Community as its Own Entity of Support or Harm Concerning Trauma and Loss
Ajmer Wahiwala 
Revisioning the Maternal Gaze: A study to discover how sight can be compensated for within relationship. 
Marie Meechan 
A qualitative inquiry into the psychological effects of an unexplained infertility diagnosis and loss: A response to counselling intervention. 
Dima Al Rayes 
The Link Between Mindfulness and Mental Health, Incorporating Dialectical Behavioural Therapy Mindfulness Skills through the lens of Yogic Practices
Dominica Hamilton Leahart 
An Autoethnographic Exploration on Living and Practicing on the Autistic Spectrum
Ela Altin 
Bilingual Psychotherapists’ Experiences of Conducting Bilingual Therapy with Families
Barbara Erber 
The purpose of this project is to study the experience of embodied presence and its relationship to feeling safe in theory and in the practice of Authentic Movement, hereafter referred to as AM (Bacon 2015, Pallaro ed. 1999). 
Peter Hellsten 
Attachment trauma in men who engage in (self-)harming, high risk sexual behaviours (SHHRSB) with other men – A qualitative, phenomenological and intersubjective enquiry.
Gillian Fitzsimmons 
Investigating gender identity during female to male transitioning in the perinatal period and how counselling can help.
Sylvia Hillman 
An inquiry into the adult experience of living and relating with ADHD
Ji Won Kang 
Deprived Grief: A South Korean Fathers’ Bereavement around losing their unborn baby
Lucy Dixon  Writing trauma: An inquiry into the transformation of childhood relational trauma through reflective writing.
Buddhini Withana 
Children’s mental health and wellbeing in Sri Lanka: the contribution of social and emotional skills that stem from culturally specific socialisation processes, and its relevance to universal frameworks of social and emotional learning
Rhea Gandhi 
Reclaiming lost histories in counselling training: A participatory action research initiative
Caren Christie 
Intergenerational preparedness for Trauma?  An Autoethnography.
Hassan Bishil 
The influence of the body on the relationship with a family member diagnosed with Schizophrenia. 
Anita Rampat 
Mental health models in prison, a prisoner’s perspective. 
Chun Yeung Yu 
The development of a culturally-grounded psychotherapeutic model based on the theoretical framework of pluralistic counselling in Hong Kong
Sydney Millman 
Radically Observed Dysfunctional Grief during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Jamie Steinitz 
The Disconnect Between the Body as it is Experienced and The Body as it Actually Is: Exploring the Relationship Between Childhood Trauma, Sensory Processing Issues, and Body Image Disturbances in Patients with Anorexia Nervosa
Anjum Abbas Shah 
An Islamic Understanding of Emotion; Developing Theory for Psychotherapy and Mental Health
Sara Mollis 
‘Finding Some Love in the Blood’ - an autoethnographic research proposal
Miriam Merin A Good Enough (Alma) Mater: Exploring Self and Geography among Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Campus
Mia Livingston 
The Anatomy of Recovery from Complex Trauma: An Autoethnography