Behaviour Change for Health and Sustainability Conference 2025

Our conferences bring together industry, academia, government and the third sector to discuss the applicability of behaviour change to the most up to date global topics.

Conference banner join us in Lisbon 2-3 April 2025

Key information

The conference will take place in Lisbon on 2 and 3 April 2025, with pre-conference workshops, sessions and networking on 1 April.

Registration is now open via the UCL store, and you can benefit from early bird rates until 20 January 2025.

Pre-conference sessions will be available to book separately later this year.

Our call for abstracts and our call for workshop / creative ideation sessions are open for submission until Monday 4 November 2024.

We are delighted to announce that the 9th International Conference from the UCL Centre for Behaviour Change will be held in partnership with the Behavioural Sciences Group at the NOVA National School of Public Health.

The 2025 conference will take place in Lisbon, Portugal. We will confirm the exact location and provide some accommodation suggestions towards mid-October.

There will also be an online option, which will allow virtual attendees to watch the sessions live and view the posters.

Book your place

Programme

The theme of the conference is Behaviour Change for Health and Sustainability. Within this, we have six core thematic areas, which the programme will be based around:

Thematic areas

Health behaviour change - behaviour change for improving health and wellbeing
Climate change and sustainability - behaviour change for preserving the environment, mitigating negative consequences of climate change and ensuring sustainable development
Advancing behavioural science and its application - innovations in behaviour change theory, design, measurement and other methodologies, as well as critical issues in its advancement and application
Digital technologies - the use of information technology, social media, or mobile and wireless technologies in behaviour change research and interventions
Applications of behavioural science to policy and practice - theory, methods, and evidence to promote the implementation of research findings into health and other services, such as routine work with patients, family members, schools, communities, or organisational or policy contexts
Inequalities and inclusiveness - impact of inequalities on behaviour and associated outcomes, and how to tackle such effects, including inclusiveness approaches

Keynote speakers

We are delighted to announce two of our keynotes:

The who and how of embedded behavioural research and practice

Professor Lucie Byrne-Davis & Professor Jo Hart (University of Manchester)

More than ever, people are asking for answers to tricky behavioural problems that cause or sustain challenges to human health. Across the world, organisations are tasked with tackling these problems and are recognising that expertise in behavioural science might maximise their chances. There are tools, methods and theories that can be used and a growing consensus around some of these. In this presentation, we will discuss our experiences of, and research on, working with public health teams and health partnerships across the world, to mobilise and conduct behavioural research. We will ask how we can do this optimally.

Achieving behaviour change through communications

Professor Robert West (University College London)

Communications campaigns (‘comms’) play a key role in behaviour change, whether it be through TV, social media, emails, radio, leaflets, articles, videos, podcasts, art, chatbots, conversations or other channels. This keynote will discuss how to plan a comms campaign using the Capability, Opportunity, Motivation-Behaviour (COM-B) framework to decide what to target and what behaviour change techniques are best suited to this kind of intervention. It will go on to explore how to bridge the gap between the choice of behaviour change techniques and generation of specific ‘messaging’ using the creative process and whether and how AI can help with this.

Call for abstracts

Our call for abstracts is now open. We welcome submissions showcasing work related to behaviour change across topics related to health and/or sustainability, from both research, academia and those working in practice. We are seeking abstracts for:

Oral or poster presentation
Symposium
Panel discussion / debate

Call for abstracts

Call for workshop proposals & creative ideation sessions

We are seeking proposals for workshops and creative ideation sessions, to be held on the pre-conference day on Tuesday 1 April 2025. Creative ideation sessions should be used to bring people together to brainstorm ideas and potential solutions to tackle issues relating to behaviour change for health / sustainability.

Call for workshops & ideation sessions

Committees

We are very grateful to have the following members on our committees for the 2025 conference:

Scientific Committee 2025

Co-chairs:

Dr Fabiana Lorencatto (The UCL Centre for Behaviour Change, UK)
Dr Marta Marques (NOVA National School of Public Health, Portugal)

Committee members:

Dr Miguel Arriaga (Portuguese Directorate-General of Health, Portugal)
Dr Sadie Boniface (The UCL Centre for Behaviour Change, UK)
Professor Angel Chater (University of Bedfordshire & The UCL Centre for Behaviour Change, UK)
Dr Talea Cornelius (Columbia University, USA)
Dr Cristina Godinho (NOVA National School of Public Health, Portugal)
Dr Keegan Knittle (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)
Professor Felix Naughton (University of East Anglia, UK)
Dr Olga Perski (Tampere University, Finland)
Dr Manuel Armayones Ruiz (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain)
Dr Eline Smit (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
Dr Elaine Toomey (University of Galway, Ireland)
Professor Jane Walsh (University of Galway, Ireland)
Dr Rosie Webster (ZINC, UK)

Organising Commitee 2025

Dr Fabiana Lorencatto (The UCL Centre for Behaviour Change, UK)
Dr Marta Marques (NOVA National School of Public Health, Portugal)
Professor Susan Michie (The UCL Centre for Behaviour Change, UK)
Maiara Moreto (NOVA National School of Public Health, Portugal)
Isabelle Olson (The UCL Centre for Behaviour Change, UK)
Carolina Silva (Trinity College Dublin & NOVA National School of Public Health, Portugal)