Rate My Professor Louise Pannekoek

Louise Pannekoek is a Lecturer in the Curtin School of Population Health within the Faculty of Health Sciences at Curtin University. She is a clinical psychologist who completed her Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) and Master of Psychology (Clinical) at the University of Western Australia in 2014. Prior to her appointment at Curtin, Pannekoek worked as a Senior Clinical Psychologist in the Eating Disorders Programme at the Centre for Clinical Interventions. In this role, she contributed to clinical practice and the development of patient resources, including the When Panic Attacks module series published by the Centre for Clinical Interventions in 2023.

Pannekoek's academic interests and research specializations include therapeutic change processes, eating disorders and body image, perinatal mental health, and pain. Her career has focused on factors affecting treatment engagement and outcomes in psychological interventions. Key contributions encompass studies on dropout definitions, rates, predictors, and outcomes in outpatient enhanced cognitive behavioural therapy for eating disorders; the role of therapeutic alliance in enhanced cognitive behavioural therapy for bulimia nervosa; increased wait-list time as a predictor of dropout from CBT-E; predictors of homework engagement in group CBT for social anxiety; relationships among working alliance, group cohesion, and outcomes in group therapy; and imagery-enhanced versus verbally-based group cognitive behaviour therapy for social anxiety disorder. Her research on eating disorders and treatment retention has received awards from the Butterfly Foundation and the Australian and New Zealand Academy for Eating Disorders. At Curtin University, she teaches in population health, applying her clinical and research expertise to training the next generation of health professionals.