Current Degree:
PhD in Eating Disorders
Undergraduate Degree:
Bachelor of Arts (double major in French and Psychology)
Bachelor of Psychology (honours)
What department are you in, and what is your research topic?
Centre for Mental Health. My research is focused on the role of cognitive flexibility and related factors (e.g. perfectionism, rumination) in the development, maintenance and treatment of anorexia nervosa.
What are your personal interests?
I have a passion for baking! I often spend my weekend baking and testing out new recipes. I love to bake lemon tarts, caramel slice, choc chip biscuits and doughnuts. Before COVID-19, I was known for bringing treats to the office and to meetings. Unfortunately that doesn’t work so well over Zoom! I also love to read and practice yin yoga.
Tell us a bit about why you are doing this research, how you got to where you are now (e.g. analysing results), and any obstacles or adversities you’ve faced with respect to your research (e.g. ethics sign off, noisy data, COVID)
I first became interested in eating disorder research because I had friends who had a diagnosis of an eating disorder. I saw firsthand how devastating these illnesses are and how many people are affected by them. Once I’d decided that I wanted to pursue a career in research, I knew that I wanted to focus on eating disorders. I am in the third year of my PhD and I am currently concentrating on data analysis and writing. In 2020, I was hoping to finish recruitment and testing for the face-to-face study of my PhD, but COVID-19 had other plans. Fortunately, early in my PhD I ran an online study, so this year I have been able to instead work on analysing the data from my online study and writing up some papers. Hopefully I will be able to resume my face-to-face study soon!
What would you like to do post PhD?
After my PhD, I’d like to complete a post-doc researching anorexia nervosa. In a perfect world, I would love to work at a university as a researcher, but I’d also be interested in research positions with mental health organisations and hospitals. I really enjoy mentoring students and sharing knowledge, so in the future I would also like to supervise Honours or Masters students.
Any book and/or podcast recommendations?
Books: Educated by Tara Westover
hessa.school.blog 