Dr Laura McGrath
Senior Lecturer In Psychosocial Mental Health
Biography
Professional biography
Laura started at the Open University in August 2019 as a Lecturer in Mental Health. She previously worked at the University of East London, after completing her PhD at London South Bank University in 2012, following a conversion course to Psychology.
Research interests
Laura is interested in how people's material environments - places, objects, buildings - influence their psychological experiences. Her work in this area has included projects looking at how people using mental health services in the UK experience and use the spaces they spend time in (eg homes, hosptials, public places); research with staff and patients in a re-designed forensic psychiatric faciltity; and research looking at experiences of lockdown in Australia. Laura also has an interest in the relationship between art and health, and has been involved in a number of service evaluations with NHS and third sector partners. Her work is mainly qualitative.
Publications
Book
The Handbook of Mental Health and Space: Community and Clinical Applications (2018)
Book Chapter
Prejudice, power and psychology (2023)
Living well and wellbeing (2023)
Journal Article
Organizing the sensory: Ear-work, panauralism and sonic agency on a forensic psychiatric unit (2020)
Agents and spectres: Life-space on a medium secure forensic psychiatric unit (2019)
Life lines: Loss, loneliness and expanding meshworks with an urban Walk and Talk group (2018)
Facing the void: Recollections of embodying fear in the space of childhood homes (2018)
The Psychological Impact of Austerity: A Briefing Paper (2016)
Psychologists Against Austerity: mobilising psychology for social change (2016)
Exploring embodied and located experience: Memory Work as a method for drug research (2014)
Embodying limb absence in the negotiation of sexual intimacy (2014)
The scenes and spaces of anxiety: Embodied expressions of distress in public and private fora (2008)
