Chris is one of the founding ISCHP members. She is currently Treasurer and has also been Chair. Currently, she is a Professor in the School of Psychology at Massey University in New Zealand–considered the cradle of critical health psychology. She co-leads the Health and Ageing Research Team, who has been conducting a longitudinal study of ageing, following older New Zealanders and their quality of life since 2006. In this Career File, Chris shares how she got to be where she is today.

Brett Scholz is a research fellow in the Medical School at The Australian National University. His work is concerned with consumer leadership in health services and systems, and the allyship that non-consumers can engage in to create opportunities for consumer leadership. He is one of the co-editors of ISCHP’s podcast The Operative Word. He can never say no to a cup of tea.

Continue reading →

Andrea LaMarre recently defended her PhD, which explored experiences of eating disorder recovery from the perspective of people in recovery and their supporters. She is now working as a postdoctoral fellow at the Propel Centre for Population Health Impact at the University of Waterloo, and continuing to build community in the arts and social justice spheres.

What is your current position?

I recently defended my PhD at the University of Guelph in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition. I am now starting an exciting postdoctoral fellowship at the Propel Centre for Population Health Impact at the University of Waterloo. I am also continuing to work as a collaborator on a large grant under the directorship of Dr. Carla Rice, Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life, including some research exploring “relaxed performance” approaches to theatre with the British Council of Canada. I am also a facilitator for the organization Art with Impact, where I will be running workshops that aim to break down mental health stigma using film. Continue reading →

Dr Rado Masaryk is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Applied Psychology, Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava. He is also hosting the next 2019 ISCHP conference in Bratislava and our new conference chair. We are delighted to feature his career file.

Could you say a bit about your career trajectory so far?

One year after finishing my Masters in psychology I found out about a PhD position opening at the Faculty of Education which is a school that trains future teachers. I was sceptical at first. I had never thought of myself as an academic type. But I applied anyway, and got accepted, and found myself in a rather bizarre institution. The school was heavily underfunded, most of the students had no intention of ever going into teaching, there was no tradition of doing real research, many of my colleagues were severely burned out and they found no joy in their teaching or research. I nevertheless hung around until I got my doctorate. And then surprisingly I hung around for several additional years, because I felt that working with future teachers was the most important job in the world. However, I got to feeling a bit stagnant as far as my academic career went. So after 9 years it was time to move on. The Head of the Institute of Experimental Psychology at the Slovak Academy of Sciences offered me a job and a chance to manage a group of inspiring young researchers. I started to publish internationally (it was about time!). Now I work at the Comenius University’s Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences which is a small institution and at the same time a very dedicated group of researchers. We are the youngest and the most radical part of the Comenius University, and I enjoy working for this progressive faculty. Continue reading →