Eleanor Leigh

AIM Co-lead

I am an Associate Professor and MRC Clinician Scientist Fellow at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, and an Honorary Associate Professor at UCL. My research focuses on helping young people with common mental health difficulties, especially anxiety problems, using psychological approaches like cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). I study how common mental health problems develop, what keeps them going, and how we can treat them effectively — including through digital tools and school-based approaches. To do this, I use a broad range of methods, including experimental and prospective methods, meta-analysis, and clinical trial designs, all informed by our engagement with our lived experience experts. As part of the Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre’s Mental Health in Development theme, I co-lead efforts to measure and modify underlying mechanisms in youth mental health. My research is supported by the MRC, Wellcome Trust, and NIHR. 

Felicity Waite

AIM Co-lead

The focus of my work is to develop more effective and easily accessible interventions for young people at risk of serious mental health problems. This involves identifying and targeting the mechanisms underpinning mental health problems. Then using this theoretical understanding to develop effective treatments to enable people to feel safer, to feel happier, and to reengage with the world. Often this includes harnessing innovations in technology, such as virtual reality. The new treatments, developed in collaboration with young people with lived experience of the problems, are then tested in clinical trials ready for potential use in the NHS.

Georgina Donati

Postdoctoral Researcher

I am a postdoctoral researcher interested in the factors that influence cognitive ability across development as well as how they interact with emotion and well-being.  My background is in Philosophy with a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience and my research incorporates multiple methodologies and perspectives to explore mechanisms on different levels of description. My projects have included exploring the genetics of adolescent executive function, great ape motor planning and well-being, global data for child development policy, and climate change and child health.  This project looks at psychological well-being from a first-person perspective using young people’s subjective experiences as a way of accessing cognitive mechanisms.

Jacquelyn Romaine

Postdoctoral Researcher

I am a postdoctoral researcher currently working in the AIM team. My interests are in questionnaire design and development with a particular focus on child and adolescent health, women’s health, quality of life, treatment satisfaction, and wellbeing.

My background is in health psychology. I have experience in the design and development of quality of life and treatment satisfaction patient-reported outcome measures. I am currently working on the evaluation of existing measures of the mechanisms that drive mental health in children and young people (e.g., intolerance of uncertainty, behavioural avoidance).

Olivia Adams

Research Assistant

I am a research assistant in the AIM team. I have previously worked with young people and families in mental health services, and I am enthusiastic about communicating scientific information effectively to non-researchers. I also work on a research trial for a social anxiety intervention for adolescents. Currently I am examining rumination as a mechanism in anxiety and depression symptoms.