Research
My main program of work focuses on understanding how relationship experiences transmit risk or confer resilience for mental health problems, including parent-child relationships, friendships and romantic relationships. This includes understanding the processes in the inter-generational transmission of inter-partner abuse from parent to adolescent relationships, and the role of parent-child relationships in conferring risk and resilience for mental health problems. More broadly my research interests lie in understanding mechanisms for the emergence and maintenance of mental health problems using longitudinal study designs. I am interested in understanding the risk and protective factors for the broad spectrum of mental health difficulties, including behavioural/antisocial, emotional and personality disturbances. My work also involves examining whether processes operate across cultures or are culture specific and across populations of typically developing and autistic individuals.
I have expertise in statistical analysis, in particular longitudinal modelling and latent variable modelling. I also have expertise in longitudinal study design and in co-ordinating longitudinal research studies, and in harmonising and jointly analysing different datasets.