About
Julia is an Associate Professor at Swansea University. Her specialist area is mental health, particularly mental health promotion and early intervention. She works closely with Deaf communities to improve healthcare policy and practice to reduce health inequalities that Deaf people experience.
She is currently an RCBC Wales Postdoctoral Fellow working on a project called SUPERSTAR, about systems that support hearing families with deaf children. Julia develops and promotes networks to obtain funding and expertise to research and improve practice, policy and education with Deaf people to improve overall health. Link to Tackling inequalties in Deaf mental health communities.
Julia is interested in Deaf awareness and is working with Deaf communties on NEWSREEL, a Deaf-led eLearning package which is funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing. She also received funding for a two year MASI Summit project to increase health professional students' empathy with Deaf patients through simulated learning.
Julia developed and led the public and patient involvement activities in the College from 2010 to 2020, and she views involvement and engagement with stakeholders as central to her work. Julia has 30 years’ experience in mental health, which includes 8 years in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). She was awarded Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy and was a Fellow with NICE from 2015 to 2018. The focus of her PhD explored professional mental health nursing identities and service user involvement in nursing processes. Julia has held leadership roles in the NHS and in Higher Education involving liaison with internal and external bodies, relating to service provision, organisation and quality assurance.
She is available for media engagement. She is a member of the Ethics Committee and Post Graduate Research Committee.