Health and Wellbeing Community of Practice Workshop Series: Term 3

Our aim is to foster an inclusive community that is supportive, compassionate, and respectful of staff and students at UCL. If you are involved in, or have interest in health and wellbeing, we would love you to join us!  

Find out more via our MS Teams Community

Join us this term as staff take on a variety of topics, investigating different aspects of health and wellbeing, equipping us with the knowledge and tools to support students, colleagues, and ourselves.

Workshops take the form of a 30-minute presentation, followed by a 15-minute discussion or Q&A. Previous and upcoming recordings can be found in our MS Teams folder: Workshop Series.

24 April: ICH PhD Students – Peer support with PhD students: APPROACH study 

The APPROACH study aimed to understand what peer support provision was available for postgraduate research students and collaboratively adapt NHS-developed peer support training with students to enable them to better support each other. The study was funded by the Mental Health Strategic Initiative in the Institute for Child Health.

Sign up here.

8 May: Leonora Bennett – Mindful Break: Refresh Your Mind, Refocus Your Day 

Join an enriching mindfulness session designed to enhance your wellbeing and resilience. In this session, discover the principles and benefits of mindfulness, including its proven ability to reduce symptoms of mental health issues. We will learn about the history of mindfulness, inspired by the pioneering work of John Kabat-Zinn, followed by a 20-minute practice focusing on breath and body awareness and a soothing 10-minute body scan. Take this opportunity to check-in with yourself and embrace a moment of tranquility amidst your busy day.

Sign up here.

22 May: Dr Lisa Fridkes – The Role of Educators in the Climate Crisis 

This talk will explore how the climate and ecological crisis could and should influence our pedagogy. It will consider how we position our practice, alongside how the climate crisis might impact our teaching methods, ways of managing assessment and feedback and also, as research-led practitioners, what we actually teach. We will discuss why this is important, whether there is a responsibility (moral or otherwise) to do this, and what resources are available.

Sign up here.

5 June: Siobhan Morris & Professor Essi Viding – Grand Challenges: Health and Wellbeing Theme

Siobhan Morris and Essi Viding will present on the broad aims of the Evolved Grand Challenges, as well as the vision for the Mental Health and Wellbeing Grand Challenge. Siobhan will first set the context, including the scope and ambition of the Evolved Grand Challenges and how they build on the prior Grand Challenges work. Essi will share the vision for the Mental Health and Wellbeing Grand Challenge, which involves supporting research and educational activities, as well as institutional operations directed at accelerating intervention discovery and delivery – both within and outside our own community.

Sign up here.

If you have a query or would like to be a guest speaker in academic year 2024/25, get in touch with us: shw.cop@ucl.ac.uk