Dr Laura Havers
Postdoctoral Researcher
Laura is a postdoctoral researcher working as part of the quantitative work package of the ATTUNE project. In this role, she is researching relations between youth adversity and mental health in adolescence through the lens of intersectionality.
Laura completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London, and defended her thesis in 2022. Her PhD was focussed on the development of psychotic-like experiences and negative symptoms in adolescence and emerging adulthood.
Prior to and throughout her undergraduate degree, Laura worked and volunteered with individuals experiencing mental health difficulties. This work and voluntary experience is imbedded in Laura’s motivation to measure and model the presentation and development of individual differences in psychological and emotional processes, and the societal factors that are associated with these differences. She is passionate about understanding and using quantitative methods that both adequately address the research questions at hand, and capture the psychological constructs being studied.
Alongside her postdoctoral research, Laura conducts introductory-level workshops on structural equation modelling topics, with the aim of maximising understanding and practical application among applied mental health researchers. She also runs a quantitative methods discussion and support group for ECR (email Laura if interested to join). Laura is currently a Lecturer (maternity cover) on the MSc Forensic Psychology and Mental Health programme, and she co-supervises the PhD of Emma Hayashibara on mental health disparities in neurodivergent youth from an intersectional perspective.