The FACE19 research team is led by Professor Jane Callaghan, Director of the Centre for Child Wellbeing and Protection at the University of Stirling.
Professor Jane Callaghan is a psychologist and interdisciplinary scholar, whose work has largely focused on childhood and family life, particularly in circumstances that are challenging. She is particularly known for her work on domestic abuse in childhood.
Dr Sarah Wilson is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Stirling. She is RPG Tutor for PhD students in the Child Welfare and Protection group and the current Sociology Pathway lead for the Scottish ESRC Doctoral Training Programme. She has been involved in the University’s policy around Preventing and Tacking Sexual Violence and Misconduct. She is a member of the Centre for Gender and Feminist Studies at the University of Stirling and an affiliate director of the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR). She is also a qualified non-practising solicitor (England and Wales) with experience of criminal, family, social assistance and medical law. Her recent research has combined theoretical interests in the sociology of families, relationships and personal life with developing sensory (visual and audial) and artistic qualitative research methods.
Dr Maggie Grant works for the Centre for Child Wellbeing and Protection and for the Adoption and Fostering Alliance Scotland. Her research focuses on children living in kinship, fostering or adoptive families and on separated migrant children. She has a particular interest in mixed methods research.
Dr Sian Lucas is a registered social worker and has research interests in migration, linguistic discrimination and social justice. Her PhD explored the phenomenon of child language brokering – the process in which children provide linguistic and cultural mediation for adults who do not share a common language. She has carried out research with migrant children and young people about their experience of child language brokering. She has worked on various research projects to explore dimensions of wellbeing and service delivery (ESOL students, care experienced young people, service users, carers, practitioners, service managers, women with mental health difficulties) with focus on implications for practice and policy. She has used creative, qualitative, visual and participatory research methods including the development an interactive learning tool for social work students based on young people’s care experience.
Ms Judy Warburton is based at the University of Stirling and works as a Research Fellow in the Centre for Wellbeing and Protection as well as completing her doctoral thesis looking at decision making in the Scottish Children’s Hearings system. Her research interests include; judgement and decision making, child welfare, children’s rights, listening to the views children and young people and enabling effective participation when decisions are being made about their lives, as well as youth justice.
Ms Chris Gray is based in the Centre for Child Wellbeing and Protection within the University of Stirling. Her background is in Psychology and Social Work with extensive experience in child protection and gender based violence. When not homeschooling her two young children during lockdown, she is completing an ESRC funded PhD using ‘standpoint’ and Institutional Ethnography to better understand the processes involved in the Violence Against Women Network. She also teaches on the Undergraduate and Postgraduate Social Work programmes and she’s an Associate Tutor responsible for a small group of post-graduate Social Work students. She is particularly interested in examining knowledge production and amplifying the voices, knowledge and experiences of marginalised groups. Using participatory action research and feminist epistemology, she has worked to foreground the systems and processes that impact the every day/night life of a range of less dominant populations. She is really looking forward to working alongside parents, carers, young people and key workers to explore their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic in her role as Research Fellow.
Ms Nikoletta Komvoki has worked initially as a Nursery Nurse and then as a Primary Teacher in many different settings in Scotland and Greece. She recently completed her doctoral thesis, which explored the health visiting service of Scotland in the context of the Getting it Right for Every Child policy approach. She is currently working as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Child Wellbeing and Protection of the University of Stirling. Her research interests include: social policy, children’s rights, child protection and qualitative research.
Ms Laura Bellussi studied her undergraduate and Master’s degree in Psychology at the University of Pavia in Italy. She previously worked in childcare and education and cooperated with associations providing support to families with a jailed parent, asylum-seekers and people hosted in a rehabilitation centre, getting to know approaches that draw inspiration from the literary and performing arts to support personal and community growth. Her research work at the Centre for Child Wellbeing and Protection focusses on the evaluation of interventions to improve quality of life and safety of children and families, with the use of qualitative and mixed methods.