Dr Tanya Frances

Professional biography

Tanya is a Lecturer in Psychology and Counselling based in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS). She joined the OU as a central academic in 2022. Tanya is a chartered psychologist and a counsellor and psychotherapist. Her interests include trauma, gender-based violence, social justice, epistemic justice, epistemic violence, eating disorders, and working towards more just, trauma-informed and accessible eating disorder treatment systems. More broadly, Tanya has a keen interest in systems of care and justice (e.g., healthcare, legal systems, mental health care), and how issues of epistemic violence, epistemic trust, epistemic marginalisation, and voice, are experienced, and can be attended to meaningfully in order to work towards reducing harm. Methodologically, Tanya is interested in critical qualitative approaches, specifically narrative and feminist approaches, and engaging in dialogue about the interconnectedness of methodology and epistemology, and implications for knowledge production. 

Tanya has a range of research project experiences. Projects include exploring the impact of public health legislation on those with experience of eating disorders, exploring the applications of and experiences of BMI-centric eating disorder treatment and referral criteria, evaluating or supporting the development of services and/or programmes for those experiencing domestic abuse, perinatal mental health difficulties, child sexual exploitation, child trafficking, and children and young people who are care-experienced. Tanya has been involved in domestic abuse research since 2013, and is particularly interested in childhood and young adult experiences of domestic abuse, how people navigate transitions, and reflexive feminist methodologies that centre victim-survivor voices and stories and attend to personal-socio-political intersections.

In her counselling and psychotherapy practice, Tanya works primarily with people who have experienced trauma. She integrates humanistic, feminist, compassion-focused, and mindfulness and embodiment-focused ways of working. Tanya is interested in power-sensitive and feminist approaches which attend to the broader socio-structural conditions that experiences of distress are located in and which can create and maintain distress. Tanya is also a certified trauma-informed yoga teacher, and is currently undertaking training in yoga therapy.

Research interests

Tanya’s research interests include eating disorders, gender-based violence, trauma, social inequalities and intersectionalities. She is interested in approaches that attend to personal-political intersections, taking a critical approach that attends to the socio-structural conditions that shape people's experiences of violence, the conditions that enable violence, and the conditions that shape how people make sense of violence and talk about it.

Tanya has worked on projects that have evaluated or explored services for eating disorders, domestic abuse, perinatal wellbeing, child sexual exploitation, care-experienced children and young people, and child trafficking. She is interested in promoting and developing inclusive, accessible, and anti-oppressive practice and developing services for people that aim to reduce barriers to access and that attend meaningfully to intersectionality and power, privilege and oppression. 

Currently, Tanya is working on projects exploring issues relating to gender-based violence. She is also working on projects that explore UK eating disorder treatment in terms of equitable access to care. At the moment she is exploring the role of weight-based treatment and referral criteria in specialist eating disorder services. She is interested in issues around epistemic justice, embodiment and the development of trauma-informed, power-sensitive and intersectionality-informed eating disorder treatment. 

Teaching interests

Tanya's current contributions are to the presentation of D241 Exploring Mental Health and Counselling and to the production of D230, a new counselling module. Previously, she contributed to the production of D120 Encountering Psychology in the Everyday by writing content on lifespan development and qualitative methods. She also co-authored a short CPD counselling course, DGXS004 Trauma-Informed Counselling.

Tanya's teaching interests include qualitative methods, particularly narrative methods, reflexivity, ethics, feminist methodologies, and participatory approaches. She is also interested in teaching critical approaches, critical mental health, and domestic abuse. In relation to counselling and psychotherapy and clinical practice, her teaching expertise is around person-centred, humanistic and trauma-sensitive approaches, issues around accessibility and diversity, epistemic trust, and the integration of embodiment practices in counselling and psychotherapy. 

Impact and engagement

In collaboration with the Intersectional Violences Research Group (IVRG), Tanya has been involved in providing consultation for the UK government's 2021 Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy. Publications relating to this consultation work can be found in our article in The Coversation , in a BPS blog post as part of a media campaign, and in the BPS Psychology of Women and Equalities Section (POWES) blog post.

External collaborations

Tanya is a founding member of the Intersectional Violences Research Group (IVRG), an international research group which takes a critical psychological approach using insights from feminist, queer, anti-carceral and trans approaches to the study of sexual and domestic violence. Tanya is also a founding member of the Lived Experiences of Eating Disorders Research Collective. This is a collective group of clinicians and academics with lived experience of eating disorders who are working in the eating disorders field. We aim to work towards a better understanding of a diverse range of eating disorders and to contribute to developing the evidence base for better care for all who need it. We are particularly interested in building evidence that centres the voices and perspectives of people with lived experiences. Tanya is also currently providing external consultation for the BACP.

Tanya was awarded the 2022 PCCS Books Research Award, in collaboration with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).