Lucy is an academic psychologist conducting research about mental health and social development in adolescence, focusing on the negative consequences of increased mental health awareness in schools and society more broadly. Her work has recently been discussed on BBC2’s Newsnight and BBC Radio 4’s Analysis, and in The Economist, The Times, New Scientist, The New York Times and The Atlantic.

Lucy is currently a Prudence Trust Research Fellow and an NIHR Senior Research Fellow in the Dept of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford (2023-). Before this, she completed her PhD (2011-2015) and postdoc (2015-2017) at UCL. She then moved to University of York for a lectureship (2018-2020), before returning to London to work as a senior research fellow at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families (2021-2022) and an honorary lecturer in psychology at UCL (2020-).

Lucy has extensive experience in public science communication nationally and internationally. She regularly gives talks about adolescent mental health, including to schools. Her first book, What Mental Illness Really Is (…and what it isn’t), is out now in paperback. It was published as Losing Our Minds in hardback in 2021. She is currently writing her next book, Coming Of Age: How Adolescence Shapes Us, due for publication on 4 July 2024.