Research Advisory Board

Jane Sekibo is a Health Psychology master’s student at King’s College London. She is deeply interested in mental health’s impact on physical health.

Jane is currently undertaking a placement in the Haematology Health Psychology Service at Guy’s Hospital. Here, she completed a systematic review on the impact of pain management programmes on sickle cell disease management and offered recommendations for programme development to the department.

Jane is also interested in meaning-making during challenging life events. Her MSc dissertation involves a qualitative analysis of stroke survivor stories and investigating meaning made and emotional adjustments in stroke survivors.

Jane undertook her undergraduate degree at the University of Nottingham, where she studied Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience. Here, her dissertation focused on the relationship between mental health and creativity.

After her undergraduate studies, Jane took a year out and gained experience working as a teaching assistant for children and young adults with mild to severe learning difficulties.

Jane has dyslexia and dyscalculia diagnoses. She enjoys writing and attendings hot yoga classes to stay active.

Naomi is Director of Neuro-Informed Ltd which provides neuroeducation, training and coaching to optimise cognitive, behavioural, social and psychological function throughout life. She is also co-founder of the Applied Neuroscience Association, a non-profit social impact company with a mission of accelerating the ethical and responsible translation of neuroscience research to practice.

Naomi has an MSc in Applied Neuroscience from King’s College, London and is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts and the Royal Society for Public Health. With a background in Learning and Development, Naomi has been coaching and training for over 20 years and is a former Deputy Head of Association for Coaching, Scotland. She is passionate about improving access to evidence-based strategies within education, the workplace, families, and wider society.

A school governor for SENCO, Naomi also has ADHD and has spent 17 years researching resources to better support her daughter’s ADHD, Dyslexia and Dyscalculia through school and entrepreneurship. Her daughter is now taking A levels and running Syper Education, an award-winning tutoring company working with neurodivergent students.

Poppy is a PhD student across the IoPPN (Psychological Medicine) and SSPP (Centre for Research in Education in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics). Before joining King’s, Poppy studied Education with Music at the University of Cambridge, where she developed a strong interest in equity, diversity and inclusion. Her research into the experiences of neurodivergent students led her to work on the students’ union, writing a university suicide policy and creating an independent mediation service for students and supervisors. She has spent 3 years working in NHS mental health and neurodevelopmental services where she developed a specific patient support process for university students, including guidance on inclusive teaching for their respective universities. Her work on supporting neurodivergent students has been published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and she has spoken at national and international conferences about inclusive teaching and learning. In 2019, Poppy went on to lecture at Middlesex University, developing a module on personal and professional development for student nurses which focussed on diversity, inclusion and cultural competence within mental health nursing practice. She completed her PGCHE and became a member of the HEA in the same academic year.

Poppy joined King’s in 2020 to complete a Masters in Mental Health Studies, before starting her PhD here in 2021. Since joining King’s she has offered guidance on curriculum and assessment from the lens of disability and inclusion as a member of Access King’s and as President of the KCL Neurodiversity and Mental Health Society. At King’s, she is involved in delivering workshops on neurodiversity for students and staff, and recently project managed the pilot version of the new Celebrating Neurodiversity display at the Strand building. Beyond her work at King’s, Poppy is on advisory boards for Mental Health Europe, ADHD-Europe, the United Kingdom Adult ADHD Network, and is the founder of AttentionUK, an internationally award-winning grassroots campaign relating to healthcare and educational inequalities facing neurodivergent students and service users.

Poppy is a part of the Health Protection Research Unit in Emergency Response and Preparedness, a collaboration between King’s College London and the Health Security Agency. In her PhD, she seeks to introduce the social model of disability to the field of disaster planning. Her work focusses on power cuts, and how public policy could incorporate universal design approaches to avoid marginalising disabled individuals during disaster response. She is also exploring how people view themselves and their identity and whether this aligns with narratives around vulnerability and priority groups in current policy. Finally, she is exploring the communication needs of our population, to provide advice on how best to communicate important information in an accessible way during a power cut scenario. A secondary aim is to develop a best practice model of inclusive and ethical research materials and practices that are both accessible and fully in line with the legal requirements ethical review boards, so that future researchers at King’s can see what options are available to improve the accessibility of their materials without significant difficulty or delay to their research itself. Poppy’s principal supervisor is Professor James Rubin and her secondary supervisor is Professor Gabriella Rundblad.

Rhian Ford holds an undergraduate degree from University of Surrey in Biomedical Science, with a professional training year in Madrid and Universidad San Pablo. She spent a year out then Master’s in Biomedical and Molecular Science Research at King’s College London looking into neurodegeneration. Two years then working as a Molecular Biologist at the University of Oxford researching bacterial meningitis before starting a PhD at the University of Nottingham trying to develop novel methods to combat antibiotic resistance. Not one to sit still, she has spent over a decade volunteering with St John Ambulance, private tutoring and more recently volunteered at the UK Lighthouse Covid testing laboratories at the start of the pandemic. You can follow her on Twitter.