Meet the team

Dr Felicity Sedgewick, Principle Investigator, University of Bristol

Felicity is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology of Education at the University of Bristol. She completed  the Psychology of Education Masters at Bristol in 2012-2013, and that cemented her desire to work with autistic girls and women, who became the focus of her PhD at UCL in 2014-2017. Her PhD explored the friendships and relationships of autistic girls and women, and how these differed to the experiences of autistic boys, who we know much more about.

Research topics

• friendships and relationships
• mental health
• eating disorders
• student mental health (with autistic and non-autistic students)
• the impact of COVID-19 on student engagement.

Felicity combines social and developmental psychology to ask questions that are important to the communities she works with, and tries to find answers that lead to better support for those people who need it.

Email: felicity.sedgewick@bristol.ac.uk

Dr Emma Jenks, Post-doctoral Researcher, University of Bristol

Emma is a Post-doctoral Researcher in the School of Education, University of Bristol. She graduated with her PhD from Queen’s University Belfast in 2022, focusing on the relationship between bilingualism and executive functioning.

Emma is now a Research Associate on the SMHAS project, helping to put together and deliver the training as well as running the course evaluation.

Email: emma.jenks@bristol.ac.uk

Dr Sarah Eagle, Co-Investigator, University of Bristol

Sarah is a Lecturer in the School of Education. In her research work she uses theories from psychology, particularly cultural-historical approaches (Vygotsky, Bruner) to investigate questions about learning and the contexts of learning, such how we can understand/assess how and whether out-of-school learning impacts on education as delivered at school. She is an expert in evaluating the impact of programmes in a wide range of educational contexts.

Dr Hannah Hobson, Co-Investigator, University of York

Hannah is a lecturer at the University of York, in the Department of Psychology. She completed her DPhil in 2016, investigating imitation abilities in autistic children and Developmental Language Disorder (or “Specific Language Impairment” as it was called at the time). Since then, she’s pursued research on the role of language and communication abilities in mental health and social and emotional abilities.

Hannah has ongoing interest in open research practices and how these can be incorporated in research with neurodiverse groups. In her spare time, Hannah walks her dog Griffin and enjoys hand embroidery.

Dr Trang Tran, Co-Investigator, UWE

Trang is a Senior Lecturer in Health and Social Sciences. Her academic work focus centres around individual differences in wellbeing and socio-cultural adaptation, and how these can be studies within multicultural social contexts. Her recent research has been around university student wellbeing, with various foci on aspects such as extenuating circumstances, and students from underrepresented groups.

Currently Trang is interested in undergraduate student wellbeing, and student career aspirations and employability. She also works as a research volunteer for a charity foundation for student mental health, and has previously been a Mental Health Champion for staff mental health at universities (as part of the Mentally Healthy Universities initiative with Mind).

Sarah Boon, MSc graduate, University of Bristol

Sarah Graduated with an MSc in Psychology of Education from the University of Bristol in 2020 and has since been working to support autistic and other neurodivergent people while also completing her postgraduate certificate in autism in 2022.

Sarah is also currently writing her first book Young, autistic and ADHD about the lived experiences of young people who are both autistic and ADHDers. Sarah is also autistic herself and has acted as lived experience advisor on several projects, including this project.

Robert Graham, Postgraduate Law student, University of the West of England (UWE)

Robert Graham is currently studying LLM in International Law, at University of the West of England (UWE). He is also diagnosed as having Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and has used his experience in order to benefit this project.

Miriam Harmens, Undergraduate student, University of York

Miriam was previously an undergraduate psychology student at the University of York. During her undergraduate studies, she conducted multiple research projects in the field of autism. Her area of specific interest in autistic women and their diagnostic experiences.

Since graduating, Miriam has worked in a neurodevelopmental assessment service and is now preparing to progress to train as a clinical psychologist. Miriam is herself neurodivergent and has advised on this, and other projects, as a lived experience expert.

Freya Selman, MSc student, University of Bristol

Freya has completed her MSc in Psychology of Education at the University of Bristol and is about to begin her PhD exploring the role of sport in supporting the wellbeing of autistic children and young people. She has worked part-time alongside her studies, focusing on user voice and the role of lived experience in service design and management.

Freya is neurodivergent and has worked closely with her university to improve the experiences of neurodivergent students, as well as advising on numerous projects such as this one.

Helen Ellis, National Autistic Society

Helen has worked for the National Autistic Society since 2017 across various projects, the most recent of which is the Moonshot Vision which encapsulates how society needs to change to best work for autistic people of all ages and backgrounds.

Helen was clinically diagnosed as autistic in 2009 and has been an active public speaker and advocate for autistic people ever since, training MPs in Understanding Autism through her NAS role and co-authoring the Autism and Masking book with Dr Sedgewick and Dr Hull (both University of Bristol).

James Williams, Co-director & Research lead, Spectrum First Education

Jamie co-directs Spectrum First Education with Gemma Barstow, a company leading the employment of neurodivergent professionals in Yorkshire who provide specialist support to over 800 autistic and/or ADHD-diagnosed students and professionals. He combines his postgraduate study of Critical Psychology, Sociology, Education and Autism with professional Film and TV soundtracking experience to coordinate or collaborate on creative social justice-motivated research projects.

Currently, Jamie is working with York St John, Bishop Grosseteste, and the Universities of Bristol, York and Toronto in projects aiming to remove barriers to education, employment, and well-being for neurominority people. He co-runs the science communication-focused education program Think Like a Scientist, teaching in UK & Canadian prisons and presenting papers at EGU Vienna 23 & CSF Helsinki 23 this year.