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This month we speak to Essi to find out more about her role as Pro Vice Provost for the Mental Health and Wellbeing Grand Challenge, and how her research is improving the health of the public.
What is your role and what does it involve?
I am Pro Vice Provost for the Mental Health and Wellbeing Grand Challenge at UCL – a role I share with Professor Argyris Stringaris. It is a varied and interesting role that covers setting cross-disciplinary research priorities, working with colleagues to enhance our student and staff mental health and wellbeing, and linking with NHS, government, industry and third sector to deliver improvements for mental health and wellbeing beyond our institutional walls.
How are you improving the health of the public?
I hope the Grand Challenges in Mental Health and Wellbeing will contribute to this important goal. I also hope that my own research will result in improvements for young people in particular. I currently lead two research projects that focus on indicated prevention and early intervention for young people who struggle with conduct problems, depression and anxiety. Both projects take place in collaboration with schools and, if they prove to be effective, they will offer ways of improving outcomes for young people before their difficulties escalate and become entrenched.
What do you find most interesting or enjoyable about your work?
So many things! UCL is such an exciting place to do research. We have thought leaders in multiple disciplines and a hugely collaborative ethos. It is an absolute joy to work with such outstanding colleagues and students, all conducting cutting-edge, innovative work.
How have cross-disciplinary collaborations shaped your work?
I did my PhD on an interdisciplinary MRC doctoral training programme at King’s, which covered social, genetic and developmental psychiatry. That training really instilled in me the importance of working across disciplines and bringing multiple methods together to triangulate a research question. Humans are inherently complex creatures, embedded in multiple rich environments that we have very little control over. To understand the factors shaping human development, we need a range of tools that won't be found in a single discipline alone.
What advice would you offer to others interested in developing cross-disciplinary work?
Spend some time learning about other methodologies, both their promise and limitations – a degree of common language is important. Engage with people who come from different research traditions with an open mind. It is also helpful to establish clear expectations, roles, desired standards and deliverables from the outset. Different disciplines may have very different requirements in terms of sample sizes, data-collection timelines, and publication formats. Managing expectations, identifying what each collaborator gains from the cross-disciplinary work and identifying each collaborator’s responsibilities will minimise the risk of misunderstandings or the project timelines derailing.
What's next on the research horizon for you?
That partly depends on the findings from our current projects. If the experimental interventions we are studying look promising, we need to think about how they can be scaled up. If they do not look as good as we hoped, that is also important information and will likely prompt some new basic research focused on identifying potential ‘active ingredients’ for new interventions.
If you could make one change in the world today, what would it be?
Just one? If I'm only allowed to make one change, it is hard to argue with addressing the profound inequalities that we see in our society which seem to have been disappointingly growing in the past decade.