Dr Josephine Chen-Wilson

Dr Josphine Chen-Wilson is a senior lecturer in psychology specialising in developmental psychology and its applications to education. 

Graduating with a joint honours degree in Psychology and Education from the University of Warwick, Josephine went on to research how English- and Mandarin-speaking children talked about time in their narratives in her PhD at the University of Manchester.  Josephine's PhD was partly supported by the Graduate School of Science, Engineering and Medicine scholarship. 

Josephine is a national STEM ambassador and a member of WISE.  She has supported numerous STEM outreach and inreach events such as Sci-Fest and Big Bang and STEAM Northants.  Josephine's dedication to increasing children's STEM aspirations has seen the set-up of two widening participation STEM initiatives for primary school children: Girls4Science (the University of Wolverhampton) and STEM4Me (the University of Northampton).  Josephine has presented research findings of primary school children's science capital and their STEM affinity at national conferences and research seminars in Research Centres in and out of the University of Northampton. 

Josephine is an experienced doctorate supervisor and supported 19 doctorate students to completion.  

I am working on three research strands: self-concept clarity and online self-presentation (POSS), emotion and health behaviour (#FoodMoodnYou), and science capital on primary school children's STEM aspirations. 

The research into the relationship between a person's self-concept clarity would and their online self-presentation is a long-term collaboration with Dr Chris Fullwood (University of Gloucestershire), Dr Darren Chadwick (Liverpool John Moore University), Drs Lisa Orchard and Caroline Wesson (University of Wolverhampton)(Fullwood et al., 2016 and Fullwood et al., 2020). 

#FoodMoodnYou is an international collaboration started during the first COVID lockdown in Europe. Led by Professor Tracey Devonport (University of Wolverhampton) and Dr Montse Ruiz (University of Jyväskylä, Finland), I have been working with researchers from Europe and the far East to investigate how people's wellbeing and health behaviour such as eating and physical activities may have been changed by the lockdowns (Ruiz et al., 2021) and whether completing an online diary over 7 days may reduce people's need for emotional eating (Devonport et al., 2022).  We are currently validating an emotional eating scale using data from individuals with various language backgrounds. My current collaboration with Professor Devonport and Dr Wendy Nicholls at the University of Wolverhampton and developing focuses on developing scales to measure children's emotional regulation and emotional eating (Devonport et al, 2020).   

Through outreach initiatives such as Girls4Science (University of Wolverhampton) and STEM4Me (University of Northampton), I am working with Dr Kimberley Hill and Dr Rachel Maundar on research into factors influencing primary school children's STEM infinity to inform the widening participation agenda.  The research is in collaboration with Dr Lisa Orchard, Dr Caroline Wesson and Nicola Derrer-Rendall at the University of Wolverhampton.   

Mrs Deborah Baborah - Exploring health literacy in the general population and health care providers in Nigeria.

Miss Claire Harrison-Breed - Tilting the diamond: the Study of Trauma and Dissociation in children

Mrs Audrey Orage - Young Males contemporary experiences of anxiety

Josephine co-leads the Health, Education and Behaviour Change (HEBC) research group in the Centre of Psychological Sciences (CPSS).