Tag Archives: Visiting Speaker

Visiting speaker talk on bisexuality and health promotion

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Dr Katie Wright-Bevans, a Lecturer in Social Psychology from Keele University, joined us on 23rd January 2020 to deliver an insightful visiting speaker talk on bisexuality and health promotion.

What type of Psychologist is Katie?

Katie is a critical social, health and community psychologist. Therefore, Katie draws upon a variety of perspectives when looking into different topic areas.

What kind of approaches does Katie take?

Drawing upon her perspectives Katie uses social representation theory, qualitative measures and action research approaches when designing and analysing her research.

But what does this mean?

The foundations to Katie’s research enable her to:

  1. Gain understanding of the mechanisms behind health and social inequalities;
  2. Facilitate positive social change.

Katie’s bisexuality and health promotion research:

Katie approaches her research into the LGBTQ+ community with an apolitical stance. Katie worked alongside colleagues from other institutions on the research project she talked about. This was inspiring as it allowed people to work together to design and analyse the research project so that it was considered from many points of view.
You can read national reports on bisexuality and health promotion from Stonewall and the Government.

How many participants?

840 individuals from around the globe participated in Katie’s research. This led to over a thousand pages of open-ended survey responses!

Key themes from the research:

Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. This is the process of reading through people’s responses and drawing on commonalities and differences across the data set. These responses are explored to see whether any key messages can be found from within the data.

Katie is continuing to analyse the dataset. To date she has found that sexual identities mostly hinge upon the degree of empowerment or oppression experienced within the social institutions in an individual’s life. She also found a strong theme across participants that the pursuit of wellbeing was the ultimate goal.

Key messages from the talk:

Bisexuality and health promotion is a key area for research due to the findings from recent reports because:

  • Lower mental health compared with other LGBTQ+ groups.
  • Sense of isolation from LGBT and straight communities.

Working in research teams allows Psychologists to conduct research from a range of perspectives and approaches.

Thank you to Katie for sharing her research with us and we look forward to hearing more about the research in the future!


Missed the talk? Follow the visiting speaker series and see upcoming speakers!

The Department of Psychology at Staffordshire University offers a range of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Psychology at the University’s £30 million Science Centre in Stoke-on-Trent. The department is home to the Staffordshire Centre for Psychological Research, a large and active group of psychologists, PhD students and researchers conducting work into a variety of psychological disciplines and topic areas.

School of Psychology, Sport and Exercise’s Visiting Speaker Series 2015/16

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Dr Nichola Street

Dr Nichola Street announces a new edition of the Visiting Speaker Series in the School of Psychology, Sport & Exercise:

Each year the School holds a visiting speaker series hosting academics and practitioners working in a variety of settings around the UK. We encourage attendance from everyone with an interest in psychological research and practice and we hope to see students, staff and the general public attending and engaging with psychological research.

The series is held on Thursdays from 4-5pm on a (mostly) bi-weekly basis and begins next week on Thursday 1st October. In Semester 1 talks will be held in the Science Centre Lecture theatre R001 and Semester 2 in Ashley Lecture building LT2. To keep up to date with the schedule or for more information please visit the visiting speaker series webpage for information.

This year we have a great line up of speakers that show the current and up to date trends in a number of different areas within psychology. A wide range of topics will be covered by this year’s speakers including health psychology, face perception, forensic and investigative psychology, impact pathways in applying psychology as well as cognitive and experimental neuropsychology.

First Visiting Speaker: Dr Elena Hoicka, Thursday 1st October, 4pm

Visiting Speaker

Dr Elena Hoicka

Next week the series kicks off with Dr Elena Hoicka from University of Sheffield who will be coming to speak with us about her work in developmental psychology and particularly how ‘Toddlers think for themselves!’ the abstract for her talk below outlines the fascinating research she will be discussing.

‘Toddlers think for themselves!’

Social learning has been a large focus of early developmental psychology for the past two decades. While importantly revealing how culture is transmitted to young children, questions about how young children come up with their own ideas and learn for themselves have been largely ignored. In this talk, I will present research showing that toddlers can be creative and come up with their own ideas. I will focus on two streams of research – toddlers’ creation of their own novel jokes, and toddlers’ divergent thinking with novel objects. However, I will also demonstrate that social learning can be an important part of children’s independent learning and thought, suggesting both of these strands of learning are inter-connected.

New students, returning students, members of staff, and anyone with an interest in psychology are very welcome to come along! Hope to see you Thursday 1st Oct 4-5pm, R001 Science Centre for a chance to hear about the latest research in psychology.

For more information please contact the Visiting Speaker series organiser: Dr. Nikki Street  Tel: 01782 294672 Email: nichola.street@staffs.ac.uk

For more information or details of the wide range of Psychology degrees on offer at Staffordshire University please visit our website and our courses page.

The School of Psychology, Sport and Exercise at Staffordshire University is a leading School in the UK for Psychology degrees and is situated in the heart of England.  We produce internationally recognized research which is driving knowledge in this area forward and we work with a variety of healthcare providers, charities, international sports teams and private sector organisations.