People

Name

Affiliation

Research interests

Primary Supervisors
Professor Peter Fonagy	Professor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Developmental Science and Head of the Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology at UCL. He is Chief Executive at the Anna Freud Centre London.	Issues of borderline psychopathology, violence and early attachment relationships. Integrating empirical research with psychoanalytic theory.
Professor Patrick Luyten	Professor of Psychodynamic Psychology at the Research Department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology at University College London, London (UK) and Director of the PhD in Psychoanalytic Studies. He is also Associate Professor and Director of the Psychoanalysis Unit at the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Leuven (Belgium).	The role of personality, stress and interpersonal processes in depression and functional somatic disorders, the development and neural correlates of (parental) mentalisation. Professor Patrick Luyten is accepting PhD students in the next academic year in the following areas: (a) Research on the effectiveness of Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy (DIT), a brief integrative treatment for depression, and mechanisms of change in DIT, using data from randomized controlled trial comparing DIT to CBT and TAU. (b) Research on the role of epistemic hypervigilance in borderline personality disorder (BPD). This topic is part of a larger series of studies concentrating on epistemic hypervigilance in BPD, and involves testing some key hypotheses concerning epistemic hypervigilance in relation to attachment and mentalizing in a series of experimental studies. Self-other distinction in BPD (in collaboration with Dr. Celine De Meulemeester) This research focuses on studying impairments in mentalizing about the self vs. about others in relation to borderline personality disorder (BPD). Specifically, individuals with BPD may be impaired ini self-other distinction (SOD), that is, the ability to differentiate one's own mental states from those of others. This may result in egocentric (ie attributing own mental states to others) or altercentric bias (taking over others' mental states as one's own). Using well-validated experimental tasks, this project will study biases and their predictors in relation to BPD
Dr Lionel Bailly	Honorary Senior Lecturer in Psychoanalysis at UCL and Consultant Psychiatrist (North Essex Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust).	Psychological trauma in children, including the impact of human rights violations, war and cultural issues and health related quality of life in children suffering from mental disorders. Another special interest is in the systematic and critical review of the available evidences in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Professor Aikaterini Fotopoulou	Professor of Psychodynamic Neuroscience at the Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology at University College London.	Current research projects focus on the psychological and neural mechanisms by which interoceptive body feelings, as well as multimodal representations of the body, are influenced by internalised social expectations, on-line interactions with other people and neuropeptides known to enhance social feelings. These studies point to unique neural mechanisms by which our bodies are interpersonally 'mentalised' to form the basis of our selves.
Dr Chloe Campbell	Deputy Director of the Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London; Senior Research Fellow, Anna Freud.	Mentalizing, epistemic trust, attachment theory and developmental psychopathology. The wider social and politics implications of mentalizing and the theory of epistemic trust. Also interested in studies on cultural history and psychoanalysis.
Professor Martin Debbané	Professor of Psychopathology at the Research Department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology, University College London (UK). He is also Associate Professor and director of the Developmental Clinical Psychology Research Unit at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva (Switzerland). He is a trained and licensed child and adolescent psychodynamic psychotherapist. He acts as associate and trainer in mentalization-based therapies at the Anna Freud Centre in London. He teaches and practices psychotherapy, from a contemporary psychodynamic perspective.	His research activities focus on developmental psychopathology, examining the developmental roots of severe disorders in the psychosis or personality spectrum disorders. The scientific projects involve a number of different methodologies, including but not restricted to clinical measures and cognitive paradigms, as well as structural and functional neuroimaging. He is involved in a number of longitudinal projects following youth cohorts with clinical risk (schizotypy, borderline or antisocial traits) or genetic risk (22q11.2 Deletion syndrome) for severe psychopathology.
Professor Nick Midgley	Professor of Psychological Therapies with Children and Young People at UCL and the Anna Freud Centre.	Child and adolescent psychotherapy; mentalization-based treatment with children and young people; foster care; adolescent depression; the use of qualitative methods in psychotherapy research. Prof Midgley is currently open to receiving proposals from potential PhD students interested to undertake secondary data analysis of data collected as part of the NIHR-funded Reflective Fostering Study (Midgley et al., 2021). This is a randomised controlled trial evaluating a mentalization-based parenting programme to support foster carers in the UK. Main findings will be published in 2025, but the large dataset would provide opportunities for a range of mixed-methods, secondary data analyses (e.g. of session recordings, fidelity assessments, pre- and post-intervention evaluations, interviews etc.)
Dr Liz Allison	Lecturer and Director of the Psychoanalysis Unit at UCL. Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society	Psychoanalytic metapsychology, Freud, Bion, literature, especially Romantic literature, philosophy, philosophical and literary precursors of psychoanalysis.

Secondary Supervisors
Dr Isabel Berwian	Associate Professor of Interventional Methods in Clinical Psychology, Clinical, Edu & Hlth Psychology	Project proposal for PhD in Psychoanalytic Studies All psychological interventions aim to achieve change through learning. Computational theories and models can capture and precisely describe such changes. However, change mechanisms triggered by psychoanalytic interventions have not yet been examined with advanced and recently developed computational approaches. The first step of the project will be to formalise the change mechanisms underlying psychoanalytic interventions (such as the effects of the use of transference, countertransference, interpretations, and/or other interventions of the student’s interest) as computational models of change (using, e.g., Bayesian inference, reinforcement learning and the latent cause framework). This may help to clarify which interventions lead to change in different ways and establish the boundaries within which change can take place. The second step will include testing the hypotheses generated by this computational approach in an experimental setup and developing a setup to enable testing in a clinical setting. For examples of using this type of computational approach to examine CBT interventions, see the publications below. The goal of the proposed project is to apply a similar approach to psychoanalytical interventions. Berwian, I.M., Hitchock, P., Pisupati, S. et al. Using computational models of learning to advance cognitive behavioral therapy. Commun Psychol 3, 72 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-025-00251-4 Reiter, AM., Atiya, NA., Berwian, IM., & Huys, QJM. (2021). Neuro-cognitive processes as mediators of psychological treatment effects. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 38, 103-109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.02.007 Berwian, IM., Ren, Y., Pisupti, S., Ding, J., Moon, S., Chiu, J., … Niv, Y. (2025). Selective maintenance of aversive memories as a mechanism of spontaneous recovery of fear. Preprint available at: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/2kdtf_v1
Dr Lesley Caldwell	Honorary Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit and Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Italian department at UCL. She is a psychoanalyst of the BPA, a member of the BPF, and a guest member of the BPAS, in private practice in London. With Helen Taylor Robinson she is Joint General Editor of the Trust's DWW Collected Writings project (2015).	Psychoanalysis and the Arts, Winnicott, Sexualities, The History of Psychoanalysis in Italy.
Dr Renée Danziger	Honorary Senior Lecturer in Psychoanalysis at UCL. Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society and a psychoanalyst in private practice	The application of psychoanalytic theory and concepts to social and political issues, including cyber conflict and social media, austerity, the uses of shame in political life, and revenge.
Professor John Fletcher	John Fletcher is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of 'Warwick. John is a Honorary Senior Research Associate at UCL.	Freud's metapsychology, questions of time, trauma, drive theory, and fantasy in his work, his readings of literature, painting, tragedy and their role in his thought. Freud's materialism. Freud, Kristeva, Abraham and Torok on melancholia. The work of Jean Laplanche, the General Theory of Primal Seduction, the role of the other in psychic processes, his re-thinking of gender and the sexual. Psychoanalytic approaches to fantasy in cultural production (literature, painting, film).
Dr Saul Hillman	Senior Research Fellow ChAPTRe; Clinical Research Tutor, Postgraduate Studies, Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families.	His research has predominantly involved children and adolescents in at-risk and clinical contexts, including those in looked-after and adopted settings. Many of these studies have had a strong focus around attachment and mentalization. He was a Principal Investigator on a longitudinal adoption research project ( Coram / .Anna Freud / Great Ormond Street Hospital) and several studies. In collaboration with Five Sisters River Childcare, on children and adolescents in foster and residential care. At the heart of his research has been the application of the Story Stem Assessment Profile (SSAP), a tool that is used to assess attachment in children, and developing the Adolescent Story Stems (ASSP). More recently, his interests concern neurodiversity in children and adolescents. He is part of PRIDA (Participatory research in Depression and Autism), a study that aims to understand the lived experience of depression, recovery and interpersonal therapy experiences in autism. He is also focussed on social camouflaging in neurodivergent populations.
Dr Tanya Lecchi	Tanya is a clinical and counselling psychologist, as well as an integrative psychotherapist. She works as a lecturer in counselling psychology at City University, a research tutor at the Anna Freud Centre and a senior research fellow within the Child Attachment and Psychological Therapies Research Unit (ChAPTRe).	Developmental trauma, therapeutic relationship, attachment, developmental psychopathology, mindfulness, therapeutic presence, interpersonal neural synchrony, intersubjectivity, relational psychoanalysis.
Dr Felicitas Rost	Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Clinical, Edu & Hlth Psychology	We are offering an exciting opportunity for two PhD candidates to investigate the process and outcomes of psychodynamic psychotherapy using a rich, multi-modal dataset from an existing randomized controlled trial (RCT) conducted at The Tavistock and Portman NHS FT in London. The trial examined the effectiveness of 18-month psychodynamic psychotherapy for individuals with severe treatment resistant depression. The trial protocol was published by Taylor et al., 2012, and the main findings by Fonagy et al., 2015. In addition to the main findings, further studies focused on the health economic cost of severe depression (McCrone et al., 2018) and cost effectiveness of the psychodynamic treatment (Koeser et al., 2023), differential treatment effects according to anaclitic and introjective personality (Rost et al., 2018; Rost et al., 2019), as well as on a detailed case study analysis of one participants who did not benefit from the treatment (Willemsen et al., 2024). Research Potential In addition to a range of quantitative outcome measures collected at regular intervals during treatment and follow-up, the data includes: • Recorded psychodynamic psychotherapy sessions • Qualitative interviews with therapists and participants conducted before and after therapy This unique combination of longitudinal quantitative data and in-depth qualitative material provides an exceptional foundation for research into therapeutic processes, mechanisms of change, and treatment effectiveness in a highly complex clinical population. Candidates will have the freedom to shape the research questions within this framework, allowing for creativity and originality. The project offers scope for: • Developing innovative mixed methods approaches to psychotherapy research • Exploring therapist-client dynamics and their impact on outcomes • Contributing to evidence-based practice in psychodynamic therapy for severe depression Possible angle could include the following: • Embedding process-outcome research within Blatt’s conceptualisation of anaclitic and introjected depression, carrying on from Dr Rost’s research (Rost et al., 2018, 2019) • Embedding process-outcome research within a series of case study analyses (e.g. Willemsen et al., 2024) • Embedding process-outcome research within the conceptualisation of trauma and epidemic trust
Dr Michelle Sleed	Michelle is a Senior Research Fellow within the Child Attachment & Psychological Therapies Research Unit (ChAPTRe) at the Anna Freud Centre. She is also Deputy Programme Director of the Doctorate in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy	Developmental psychopathology, attachment, infant development and parent-infant relationships, parenting, parental mentalizing, evaluating clinical interventions for families, randomized controlled trials.
Professor Dany Nobus	Professor Dany Nobus trained as a clinical psychologist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Between 2014 and 2018 he was the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Freud Museum London. He is also a Founding Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council and is an Honorary Professor at UCL.	Main research interests include the history, theory and practice of psychoanalysis, especially within the Lacanian tradition. Additionally, Professor Nobus has done research on the interface between psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the arts. He is currently working on a new, in-depth biography of Lacan.
Dr Alejandra Perez	Alejandra Perez is an Honorary Lecturer at UCL, a psychoanalyst, Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society and Parent-Infant Psychotherapist of the British Psychotherapy Foundation. She is the Director of LEAP (the Lab of Experiences and Adjustments in Parenthood) at the Anna Freud and University College London, a research lab focused on parent–child relationships and parental experiences in the early years, examining longitudinally how parent, infant, and contextual factors shape children’s mental health.	My research examines early parenthood and the development of parent–child relationships, with a focus on parents’ subjective experiences during the transition to parenthood. Drawing on psychoanalytic and attachment perspectives, I explore how parental representations, emotional processes, and relational histories shape caregiving and child development. Using longitudinal designs, I investigate how early parental experiences unfold over time and become linked to children’s socioemotional outcomes. My work aims to bridge theory, empirical research, and clinical practice in the early years.

People

Primary Supervisors

Secondary Supervisors