Our seminars explore a wide selection of topics and feature guests from a range of different backgrounds.

All seminars take place in 10 West, Room 1.10 on our University of Bath campus at 12.15pm to 1.05pm, unless otherwise stated.

Upcoming seminars

Jamie Chapman (University of Bath)

• Title: Prevalence and experience of clinical and subclinical eating disorders in elite male athletes
• Date: 18 March 2026

During this seminar, Jamie Chapman will talk about their following research:

For years, we’ve assumed that eating disorders in sport predominantly belong to a familiar set of “high‑risk” contexts: endurance athletes, aesthetic sports, mostly women. But that story leaves out an entire population hiding in plain sight. In this talk, I share findings from my PhD, which examined eating disorder risk in male high-performance athletes and uncovered a very different picture of vulnerability.

Across three studies, I explored how eating disorder risk manifests when performance‑driven behaviours, organisational pressures, and cultural norms collide. A novel male athlete‑specific screening approach suggested that traditional tools may often misclassify athletes, and that team sports like rugby can show higher muscularity‑driven symptoms than many “high‑risk” categories. Psychosocial analyses revealed that organisational stressors and ego‑involving climates are powerful, although previously overlooked, predictors of disordered eating symptoms. An immersive case study in an elite rugby environment revealed how everyday practices such as weight talk, competitive gym cultures, and fuelling constraints quietly shape how male athletes think about their bodies and their self-worth.

Taken together, the research challenges thinness‑centric assumptions and argues for a broader, more realistic understanding of eating disorder risk in performance environments. I will conclude with applied recommendations for practitioners, coaches, and sporting organisations: from context‑sensitive screening to shifting motivational climates, embedding relational nutrition support, and addressing the structural barriers that make maladaptive behaviours more likely.

Ultimately, this work asks high-performance organisations, seeking to balance competitive demands with athlete welfare, to rethink how sporting cultures can protect - or endanger - the athletes at their centre by offering evidence-based directions for policy and programme design.

Yu Shuang Gan (University of Bath)

• Title: Would you choose alternative meat? A PhD project on the imagination, choice, and cooking of alternative meat
• Date: 25 March 2026

During this seminar, Yu Shuang Gan will talk about their following research:

Alternative meats (e.g., plant-based meat and cell-cultured meat) are more sustainable alternatives to meat, but would you choose it? In this seminar, I will introduce my PhD research focusing on public perception, acceptance, choice, and interaction with alternative meat. I will summarise my research findings on (1) imagining alternative meat in the foodscapes and (2) choosing alternative meat in a Discrete Choice Experiment, and present my research progress for (3) an online cooking workshop to learn how to make a plant-based meat recipe. I will also reflect on my PhD journey so far, as well as plans for the future. I look forward to sharing my research with you all!

Dr Mark Horowitz (University College London (UCL))

• Title: TBC
• Date: 15 April 2026

During this seminar, Dr Mark Horowitz will talk about their following research:

This seminar examines why many people struggle to stop antidepressants and how current research frameworks often miss the underlying mechanisms. Long-term use produces neuroadaptations that make the brain highly sensitive to dose reductions, especially at the bottom end of the taper. Because antidepressant dose-effect curves are hyperbolic rather than linear, small numerical reductions can trigger large physiological shifts - a key reason withdrawal is frequently intense and prolonged. Evidence is reviewed showing that withdrawal symptoms are common and often misdiagnosed as relapse in clinical trials. This misclassification distorts estimates of maintenance treatment benefits and contributes to persistent assumptions about the necessity of long-term prescribing. The lecture highlights how abrupt or overly rapid discontinuation in trials generates withdrawal artefacts, which then feed into guidelines and clinical practice.

The session argues for more accurate modelling of dose-response relationships, improved study designs that separate withdrawal from relapse, and renewed attention to neuroadaptation in antidepressant research. The implications extend beyond discontinuation: they call for a broader re-evaluation of what long-term antidepressant outcomes truly represent

Dr Joanna McHugh Power (Maynooth University)

• Title: Loneliness: Theory, definition, and implications for public health
• Date: 22 April March 2026

During this seminar, Dr Joanna McHugh Power will talk about their following research:

Loneliness is emerging as a public health priority in recent years. However, debate persists about its aetiology and even its conceptualisation. I will discuss three core strands of my work in this area, focusing on loneliness among older adults. First, I will present a theoretical synthesis of the aetiology of loneliness, which has developed into the socio-ecological model of loneliness. This model explores interacting causes of loneliness at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. Second, I will discuss definitions of loneliness, which are likely to vary across contexts, and present my work synthesising lay-person definitions of loneliness across different age groups. Finally, in light of recent efforts globally to make policy concerning loneliness, I will discuss the implications of my work for the emerging public health approach to resolving and preventing loneliness.

Sarah Dance (University of Bath)

• Title: TBC
• Date: 6 May 2026

Previous seminars

• Bihui Jin, University of Bath — Intrapersonal and interpersonal effects of awe: A contextual perspective
• Dr Ali Khatibi Tabatabaei, University of Bath — Cognitive bias modification for managing chronicity in pain
• Sarah Bennett, King's College London — Tailoring therapy: How modular approaches can enhance mental health care for children and young people
• Professor Ayse Uskul, University of Sussex — Honor in the Mediterranean region and beyond: Implications for self-related, cognitive, and interpersonal processes
• Professor Mike Quayle, University of Limerick — How are social issue attitudes (e.g. about vaccines; climate etc.) absorbed into social identities? Social identity networks and identity compression in social information systems
• Darja Wischerath, University of Bath — How conspiracy narratives enable violence
• Professor Louise Arseneault, King's College London — A gateway to thousands of datasets from across the world: The Atlas of Longitudinal Datasets
• Dr Emma Soneson, University of Oxford — Understanding the role of school-based mental health support within adolescents’ wider networks of care
• Dr Jon Roozenbeek, King's College London — “Bad Bot” apocalypse: the online manipulation economy and how to disrupt it
• Dr Emily Rempel, University of Liverpool — How to put trustworthiness into practice: Case Studies from the Liverpool City Region Civic Data Cooperative
• Professor Tracey Wade, Flinders University — Broadening our perspectives on early intervention in eating disorders
• Dr Steve Westlake, University of Bath — The power of leading by example on climate change
• Professor Tim Smith, University of the Arts London — The attentional theory of cinematic continuity
• Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado, University of Exeter — Children and Adolescent Mental Health: Public Health Aspects
• Professor Ellen Townsend, University of Nottingham — Mental Health: Self harm
• Professor Alison Heppenstall, University of Glasgow — Agent-Based Modeling for Understanding Urban Complexity
• Dr Charles Ogunbode, University of Nottingham — Climate justice now! Examining public understanding of climate justice and the implications of climate justice beliefs for action and policy support