Gemma Taylor Matthews

Notable Research Awards and Prizes

• UK Society for Behavioural Medicine, Early Career Award, 2018
• Cancer Research UK, Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, 2017
• Welcome Trust, Public Engagement Prize, 2015
• BMJ, Best Paper of the Year Award, 2014
• NIHR Coordinating Centre for Research, Capacity Development Scholarship, 2011

Research Profile

I am a mixed methods researcher and my work falls within the remits of clinical and health psychology, and epidemiology, with a strong focus on applied research. My research uses epidemiological findings to find and explore intervention targets, and then interpret the results using behavioural and psychological theory for use in mental health and addiction treatment settings. 

I completed my PhD in epidemiology in 2014 at The University of Birmingham on the topic of smoking and mental health.  I continued on to post-doctoral position projects at the University of Bristol working across the MRC's Integrative Epidemiology Unit, and the Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group until 2018.

I currently hold a post-doctoral fellowship award from Cancer Research UK. My fellowship focuses on designing a smoking cessation intervention for people with depression/anxiety and testing the intervention in mental health settings (Improving Access to Psychological Services (IAPT)) in a feasibility and pilot study. 

PhD and DClinPsych Supervision

I am happy to supervise PhD and DClinPsych projects in these areas:

Methodologies:

• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses 
• Observational/cohort studies
• Secondary analyses (i.e., randomised controlled trials, Clinical Practice Research Database) 
• Advanced epidemiological techniques (i.e., propensity score matching, instrumental variable analyses, causal inference)
• Qualitative research
• Feasibility and pilot randomised controlled trials
• Randomised designs

Topics:

• Tobacco smoking and mental health
• Tobacco smoking treatment and epidemiology
• Mental health treatment and epidemiology
• Addiction treatment and epidemiology
• Dual treatment of tobacco and mental health
• Projects based in primary care services
• Projects based in Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services
• Service improvement projects
• Depression and anxiety disorders
• Behaviour change

I currently teach on the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (DClinPsych) and the MSc in Applied Clinical Psychology programmes.