Dean's Lecture Series: Jacqueline Sin and Steve Gillard Inaugural Lectures

This event is part of the School of Health Sciences Dean's Lecture Series and will welcome Professor Jacqueline Sin and Professor Steve Gillard who will give their Inaugural Lectures on their respective fields within mental health.

Speaker: Jacqueline Sin PhD, FEANS, FHEA, RNT, RMN, Professor of Mental Health Nursing at City, University of London 

Title: Co-producing Digital Mental Health Interventions: Trials, Tribulations & Aspirations

Jacqueline Sin reflects on her clinical and research journey through the changing landscape of mental health care: from pharmacological to psychosocial treatment and more recently to digital interventions. Innovative digital interventions are increasingly being co-produced with experiential experts so that they best meet the needs of end-users. Co-production is a powerful way to mobilise social capital and multi-disciplinary knowledge found within individuals and communities. This way of working challenges conventional research methods and pushes the boundaries of traditional power dynamics and defined roles. Co-producing and trialling of digital interventions including ESibling and COPe-support (www.cope-support.org) brought challenges whilst being both thought provoking and a rich source of inspiration. With co-production the quest for best evidence-based care continues.

About the Speaker:
Jacqueline is a nurse-researcher committed to evidence-based practice as much as practice-based research. She trained as a mental health nurse in Hong Kong, before undertaking further clinical and research training in Australia and the UK over the last 20+ years. Jacqueline’s work focuses on co-producing, evaluating and implementing innovative psychosocial interventions that work. All her work uses participatory approaches to amplify the voices of people with lived experience. She is passionate about transforming research evidence into tangible workforce and service development.

Speaker: Steve Gillard PhD, Professor of Mental Health Research, City, University of London

Title: Doing Research in Liminal Spaces: Peer Support in Mental Health Services

Increasingly introduced into mental health services internationally, peer support occupies a space in between. Peer workers bring experiential ways of knowing to clinical care and can act as a bridge, both to the clinical team and to community, for people whose lives have been fractured by mental distress. But research in liminal spaces invites challenge and critique, and questions of who does research and how continue to drive debates as the evidence base attempts to catch up with, and better inform policy and practice. This presentation will explore that space, charting a journey from early descriptive studies and theoretical work to complex intervention development and randomised controlled trial, before considering what next for peer support in mental health services.

About the Speaker:
Steve joined City in 2020 having been Professor of Social and Community Mental Health at St George’s, University of London. His formative research experiences explored youth, identity and conflict in the former-Yugoslavia, and prior to entering academia he worked for the mental health charity Mind. His research adopts a critical approach to the coproduction of knowledge, collaborating with researchers working from experiential and survivor perspectives. He leads an internationally recognised programme of research on peer support in mental health services, and has research interests in crisis care, health inequalities, and trauma-informed approaches to mental health care.

The talks will be followed by a Q&A.

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