What Faculty do you work in?
Medicine, Health and Life Science.
What is your main area of research?
My focus is on holistic wellbeing and my colleagues and I have developed a theoretical model of wellbeing around which we have developed a host of wellbeing-focused interventions across the healthcare and education sectors.
Why is your research important?
We often hear a lot of commentary around wellbeing but what is it really? Unfortunately, there is much misunderstanding about wellbeing and how to improve it. One of the problems here is that researchers have typically focused on wellbeing from the perspective of their own disciplines, yet there is much to be gained from adopting a more transdisciplinary perspective. Historically, research in the discipline of psychology has just focused on the individual leading to criticisms relating to the neglect of major societal challenges such as inequalities, chronic disease and the climate crisis. On the other hand, public health researchers typically neglect the huge potential of individual behaviour change. Our work seeks to move beyond the debate and criticism, designing interventions to promote wellbeing at multiple levels of scale focused on the self, others and nature. If we were pressed to answer the question – what is wellbeing in one word? We would respond with the word ‘connection’ including a focus on self, others and nature.
What SDG is your research most closely aligned with?
Our work focuses on health and wellbeing, the third sustainable development goal.
What do you hope to accomplish with your research?
We hope to reimagine the possibilities associated with thinking about wellbeing in a more holistic manner, focused on the mutual benefits to the individual, local communities and planet. For instance, in the healthcare sector we have designed a positive psychotherapy intervention for people living with acquired brain injury in particular with a focus on connections to the self, other people and nature. We have demonstrated that this work is improving wellbeing in acquired brain injury, a condition that is often associated with great hardship and suffering. Our collaboration with community-based partners – moving beyond a sign-posting approach - has helped to embed our service users into their communities, promoting collective wellbeing. More recently, we have worked alongside partners such as Surfability, Down to Earth and Cae Felin, helping us to reconnect our services users to nature, an approach that has been shown to not only promote individual wellbeing but also pro-environmental behaviours, making important contributions to the wellbeing of the planet. We are doing similar work with university student populations, encouraging students to engage with techniques and strategies to promote individual (e.g., mindfulness), collective (e.g. joining a group or society) and planetary (e.g., volunteering for a community supported agriculture initiative) wellbeing. We are now focused on building an evidence base for the impact of our research and exploring opportunities for collaboration and scaling up our activities.
Is there a cross-disciplinary element to your research? If so, who else at the University is involved?
Absolutely, I am a member of various steering groups including those for the Climate Action Research Institute and an emerging centre of excellence in biophyllic design, working with colleagues including Professor Tavi Murray in Geography, Professor Kristi Bohata in English Literature, and Professor Geoff Proffitt in Biosciences. I am also working closely with Associate Professors Fede Lopez-Terra and Geraldine Lublin in Modern Languages on various projects funded by the transdisciplinary research institute, MASI.
Are there any external collaborators involved?
I am also working closely with Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Associate Professor, Zoe Fisher in Swansea Bay University Health Board. We have been working together for more than eight years now, representing a longstanding university-health board partnership that is driving forward a focused research agenda to improve holistic health and wellbeing across the health and education sectors.
What is next for your research?
We are finalising a major randomised controlled trial of our positive psychotherapy intervention, supported by funding from Health and Care Research Wales. We are now exploring opportunities to secure additional research funding to further support our work, with an aim to develop a pan-Wales centre of excellence in holistic neurorehabilitation. We are also exploring opportunities to further embed our activities in secondary and tertiary education.