University of Surrey

Faculty Member, Psychology

Senior Lecturer

About

My engagement with higher education began with my degree in Psychology (with Philosophy), completed at University College Dublin in 1986. In 1987 I moved to London and worked as a research assistant at what was then South Bank Polytechnic until 1989 before transferring to the NHS to work as an HIV Training Officer and Counsellor. After completing my PhD at the University of Surrey in 1991, I took up a lectureship there and have remained at Surrey ever since, fulfilling various roles, principally in relation to the Practitioner Doctorate in Psychotherapeutic and Counselling Psychology (as Research Tutor) and currently the MSc in Social Psychology (as Course Director). In recent years, I returned to academic study at the University of London, obtaining qualifications in Theology (at Birkbeck) and in the Psychology of Religion (at Heythrop College).

If I were asked to provide a concise account of my research profile, I would point to three major themes, one being methodological and the other two relating to substantive topic areas. To begin with the methodological theme, although my PhD work was highly quantitative, most of my subsequent research has seen me employ a variety of qualitative approaches to explore a range of research topics. I have become quite passionate about the value of qualitative methods and am delighted to have seen them earn increasing acceptance within British psychology. Indeed, it gave me enormous pleasure to work with my former colleague, Evanthia Lyons, in producing an edited textbook on qualitative psychology (Analysing Qualitative Data in Psychology) in 2007.

However, I like to think of myself as much more than a methodological technician. Two substantive themes in my research and writing have concerned topics that I have seen as possessing significant social relevance. The first of these themes concerns various psychological aspects of lesbian and gay lives, such as sexual identity and psychotherapeutic practice with lesbian and gay clients. Perhaps the most notable output from this work was the publication in 2002 of Lesbian & Gay Psychology: New Perspectives (Oxford: BPS Blackwell) (edited with Celia Kitzinger), which received the 2003 award for Distinguished Book in Lesbian, Gay and/or Bisexual Psychology from the American Psychological Association’s Division 44 (the Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues).

In recent years, my interests have turned towards the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, which represents a third theme in my research profile. This has been a longstanding area of professional and personal interest but the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality has only recently taken a much more central role in my research and writing activities and in my plans for the future. One development that I have been delighted to encourage over the past few years has been the consistent interest expressed by trainees on the University of Surrey’s Practitioner Doctorate (PsychD) in Psychotherapeutic and Counselling Psychology to work with me in conducting research on various issues related to religion, spirituality and psychotherapy (see below). I look forward to developing this strand of work further with interested trainees from this programme and also with Clinical Psychology trainees in the future. In addition, in Spring 2010, I provided a new final year undergraduate module on the Psychology of Religion within the BSc programme in Psychology, which allowed me to share my passion for the topic with undergraduate students in a formal way for the first time.

Much of my past and present work has been framed in terms of social psychological approaches, theories and concepts, especially around identity (conceived in various ways but often in terms of identity process theory) and discourse. So, for example, in 2010, I completed a study looking at how members of a religious tradition that defines itself in terms of rationalism and liberalism position themselves and their religious tradition within discourses of rationalism, liberalism and religion and how they orient to associated ideological dilemmas. The consistent utilisation of a social psychological repertoire is not particularly surprising for someone who sees himself first and foremost as a Social Psychologist and who is proud to be the current Director of the University of Surrey’s MSc in Social Psychology!

One aspect of my role that gives me greatest pleasure is supervising the research of postgraduate students and trainees. Hence I would be very interested in hearing from anyone who is interested in working with me at MSc, PsychD or PhD level on issues relevant to the (social) psychology of religion and spirituality. More generally, I would be interested in hearing from others who are working in this field and who wish to exchange ideas.

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