Dr Lauren McAllister

Lauren is a Senior Lecturer in Children, Young People and Communities at the University of Northampton. She has worked at the university within various roles for over ten years. Previously, she has worked within research centres, collaborating with external organisations such as Northamptonshire Police and Voice Northants. Lauren is currently the Programme Lead for the MSc Child and Adolescent Mental Health programme, which recieved 100% in its recent Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey feedback. Lauren maintains the programme Specific blogsite, Youtube and Twitter.

Lauren has a keen interest in ensuring that students have the opportunity to learn in a safe space. This ethos is reflected in her organisation of a Student conference in 2015, focusing on the Psychology of Emotion and Feeling. Lauren, along with two of her colleagues, is currently working on a project that is exploring staff and student experiences of the establishment of 'safe' online teaching spaces.

Lauren interests lie in understanding how feelings and felt spaces are understood, and how these understandings have implications for how we manage difficult experiences. Laurens research interests are therefore broad, exploring diverse experiences and understandings of felt spaces. 

Laurens published work has largerly centred on how feelings and emotions are understood within roles that involve distressing experiences. In 2019, Laurens published her MSc work, which explored how members of the military made sense of emotional experiences. She has presented this work at various conferences, before progressing onto her PhD work. Lauren finished her PhD in 2020, which unpacked how Firefighters understood feeling, and how they coped with difficult experiences within their roles. Laurens PhD work also extends to critically considering the role of the researcher within the 'research space', offering novel implications for reflexivity theory and practice. This work is in the process of being published. .

Lauren, along with Luke Ward and Lauren Young, recieved funding from the University's Institute for Learning and Teaching for the 19/20 and 20/21 academic years, focusing on the feeling of 'safety' when exploring difficult topics. The research is exploring students and Lecturers experiences of 'safe' online teaching spaces, using creative and collaborative methods. The findings of this work will be used to develop a toolkit for supporting the teaching of 'sensitive' topics, as well as for the purpose of publication to improve pedagogical practice.

Lauren also has an interest in children, young people and families experiences of feelings and emotions.  She is currently working on several projects with students which use creative methodologies to enable children and young people to share their experiences using approaches that are both accessible and meaningful. Lauren has a personal interest in Autism/ASD/ASC-in particular, she is interested in exploring young peoples and families experience of diagnosis, and what Autism/ASD means to them.

Lauren is also a member of the Networking Families research group, which is an cross-university research group exploring parenting practices and how they are presented online. The group are currently working on a project exploring 'sharenting'.

Lauren is the Programme Lead for the MSc CAMH programme. This programme has recently introduced a new and unique placement module.

She is the module coordinator for:

• PSYM105: Understanding Distress in Children and Young Peopl
• PSYM132: With Young People in Mind: Clinical, Educational or Community Placement

She has / currently teaches on:

• PSY1006 Becoming a Psychologist (Research Methods)
• PSY2005 Research Methods
• PSY2016 Social Psychology
• PSY3004 Psychology of Mental Health
• PSY3026 Child and Adolescent Mental Health
• PSY2003 Independant Project
• PSYM086 Research Methods (Postgraduate)

Lauren supervises postgraduate dissertations, broadly centring on the lived experiences of children, young people and families. Lauren is currently supervising a number of dissertation projects which are exploring, but not limited to the following topics: Siblings as carers; Autism and women; perceptions of Autism; understanding of selective mutism; young peoples experiences of chronic health conditions; barriers to seeking support; diverse parenting practices; COVID-recovery in a specialist provision; childrens understandings of COVID and the changing sense of belonginess.