Our researchers
Dr Mark Pearson, Assistant Professor in Mental Health
Mark’s main research interests are the therapeutic application of creative writing and poetry to support mental health, public mental health and approaches to improve mental health outside of traditional healthcare environments, creative practice and psychosis, mental health nurse education and practice, and the relationship between tattoos and mental health. Mark continues to lead the Surviving by Storytelling managed innovation network at the Institute of Mental Health.
mark.pearson@nottingham.ac.uk
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Professor Mike Slade, Professor of Mental Health Recovery and Social Inclusion
Mike’s main research interests are recovery-focused and outcome-focused mental health services, user involvement in and influence on mental health services, wellbeing in psychosis, staff-patient agreement on need, residential alternatives to in-patient services, and developing measures such as INSPIRE, the Camberwell Assessment of Need and the Threshold Assessment Grid.
mike.slade@nottingham.ac.uk
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Dr Nicola Wright, Assistant Professor in Mental Health
Nicola’s research interests include the mental health of young people, care transitions in mental health, community mental healthcare provision, inpatient care, promotion and maintenance of service user engagement with mental health services and suicide and self-harm.
nicola.wright@nottingham.ac.uk
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Olamide Todowede, Research Fellow
Olamide's research interest is in improving public mental health and public health outcomes, with a focus on addressing health inequalities. I specialise in methodologies that integrate evidence synthesis and participatory approaches, including citizen science and co-design, to meaningfully involve community members in the research process. I am also interested in leveraging artificial intelligence to analyze data and uncover insights that can inform impactful, community-driven solutions to complex public health challenges.
olamide.todowede@nottingham.ac.uk
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Professor Paul Crawford, Professor of Health Humanities
Paul is the world’s first professor of health humanities and pioneered the development of this field.
Paul leads the most prominent health humanities research network and international conference series. Paul’s expertise lies in the application of the arts and humanities to healthcare, health and wellbeing. He has also contributed a substantial body of work in applied linguistics, literature and narrative.
paul.crawford@nottingham.ac.uk
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Dr Yasu Kotera, Associate Professor in Mental Health
Yasu’s research can be summarised as CROWN: CROss-cultural WellNess. He explores how people feel well across cultures. In over 250 academic publications, he evaluates positive mental health outcomes such as self-compassion and ikigai (meaning in life) and interventions such as shinrin-yoku (forest bathing). He leads a research group, REACH (Research Ensemble for Advancement in Cross-cultural Healthcare), working with 40 healthcare professionals, educators and consultants from 20 countries.
yasuhiro.kotera@nottingham.ac.uk
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