Rate My Professor Paula Reavey

Reavey’s research focuses on lived experiences of distress and remembering across NHS and community services, employing an ecological model that integrates environments, spaces, and people. Her interests encompass visual methods in qualitative research, mental health interventions including digital gamification for children’s wellbeing, community treatments for young people, and sexuality in forensic mental health services. She has secured approximately £12 million in funding from sources such as the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), Leverhulme Trust, Wellcome Trust, and Economic and Social Research Council for projects including mobile mental health units in Ukraine, staff wellbeing evaluations, and lived experience approaches to gambling harms. Notable awards include election as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2023 for contributions to social science practice and the British Psychological Society Book Award in 2014 for Psychology, Mental Health and Distress (Palgrave, 2013, co-authored with John Cromby and Dave Harper; second edition forthcoming 2026). Key publications also feature Visual Methods in Psychology: Using and Interpreting Images in Qualitative Research (Routledge, 2011; second edition 2021), Mental Health & Space (Routledge, 2018, with Laura McGrath), Vital Memory and Affect: Living with a Difficult Past (Routledge, 2015, with Steven D. Brown), and recent articles such as Collective memory and mental health: Limitations, provocations, possibilities (Current Opinion in Psychology, 2025, with S.D. Brown). Reavey edits the commercial book series Design With People in Mind (11th edition) and co-edits an international volume on lived experiences of distress (Routledge, 2027, with Jacqui Dillon).