North East and North West Branches Annual Conference 2023

Submissions

Key submission dates

Authors are strongly advised to register on the on-line submission system and begin preparing their submissions well in advance of the following deadlines

If you wish to submit more than one abstract, please complete individual submissions for each.

How to Submit

Please ensure you read the submission guidelines below before submitting, including the reviewer guidelines. These allow you to see how your submissions will be reviewed.

Please make your submissions via  the online application portal by clicking the 'Make a Submission' button below. You will need to create an account if this is your first time submitting. 

If you any queries about submissions please contact us at [email protected]

Access Submission Guidelines and Submit All Submissions except Symposia 

Access Submission Guidelines and Submit Symposia 

Registration

Registration is available online only. 

Additional Items

Returning Customers (members and non-members)

In order to register for the event you will need to sign in using your BPS website log in details.

We have implemented a new Membership Database and if you haven't received your pre-registration email you will need to request your unique registration link.

Once you have the link, you can complete your registration on our portal.

Once you have registered on the portal please use your username and password to log in and register for the event.

If you have forgotten your log-in details, you can reset your username or password here.

Non-returning customers (members and non-members)

If you are not a returning customer, you will need to create your BPS account on the portal. The process is straightforward and takes just a few minutes.

Once you have registered on the portal please use your username and password to log in and register for the event.

Keynote Speakers

Professor Greta Defeyter

Greta has been at Northumbria University since 2003. The Healthy Living Lab is a multi-disciplinary lab and includes academic colleagues from disciplines ranging from education, health economics, nutrition, psychology, social work, sociology, sports science, sports psychology, and law. Her current research interests are food poverty, food insecurity, social and educational injustice and holiday hunger. She has received funding from the ESRC, the British Academy, the Wellcome Trust, Public Health England, the Mayor of London and the Big Lottery, as well as funding from local authorities and industry. In 2015, she published the first evaluation of holiday breakfast clubs and in 2016 published a paper based on a UK wide Meals & More programme. She is now a recognised expert in this area and is in demand around the world. In 2015, she was made a Fellow of the British Psychological Society in recognition of her research with 'under-served' populations.  More recently, she joined prestigious line up of award winners including Ed Balls and Jamie Oliver by winning a Food Heroes Award from Sustain for her research and evaluations on school breakfast clubs and holiday hunger. In 2017, the Healthy Living Lab won the British Psychology Public Engagement Award (North East) for their translational research on feeding disadvantaged children. She currently supervises a number of PhD student's, post-docs and research assistants researching the DfE's Holiday Activities and Food Programme, and school meals. Her spare time is devoted to governance, and she is currently a Director for Family Gateway, a Trustee for Ouseburn Learning Trust and a Governor for North Fawdon Primary School.

'Poverty: Can Local Community Responses Drive Government Policies?'

More to be announced

Invited Speakers

Dr Mohammed Rahman

Dr Mohammed Rahman is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social Sciences at Birmingham City University. Previously he was a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Nottingham Trent University. Mohammed has published internationally, including books, book chapters, and peer-reviewed articles in his primary area of research – serious and organised crime. His other research interests include social inequalities, criminal exploitation, and serious violence. In 2022, Mohammed was awarded BCU's Researcher of the Year. He was awarded his PhD in 2017.

Beyond academia, Mohammed is an expert member of the Global Initiative Network. The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime is an international non-governmental organisation based in Geneva. The main responsibilities of this role are to develop innovative solutions, formulate sound recommendations and create effective tools to curb transnational organised crime dynamics worldwide.

'Living Rough: The vulnerabilities of rough sleepers in Birmingham, United Kingdom'

The rough sleeping homeless cohort is a marginalised population that has steadily increased over the past 10 years across the United Kingdom (UK). Understanding this type of homelessness and its associated vulnerabilities is crucial, as it is often misconstrued due to policy ambiguity. This paper discusses rough sleepers as a vulnerable cohort and explores the precursors that lead to them becoming vulnerable and subsequently victimised. The key findings suggest that rough sleepers frequently endure implicit and explicit modes of exploitation. Their implicit exploitation puts them in a position of vulnerability that affects their ability to trust the public, statutory and third-sector organisations. This questions their belonging in society and forces them to establish new ties and bonds, which exposes them to additional vulnerabilities. The explicit exploitation is the mere exposure of living in the streets, which puts them at greater risk of being victimised by the public, statutory bodies, and criminal groups. This paper concludes by discussing practical recommendations of how the issue of rough sleeping can be better addressed via multi-agency, governmental, and academic work.

Dr Nicky Hayes

Nicky Hayes is a writer, educationalist and consultant psychologist, specialising in social and organisational psychology. Her work includes many years of teaching and examining, and she has written many
books on psychology which have been translated into more than 18 languages. She is currently the President of the British Psychological Society, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Visiting Professor at Suffolk University, and a Council member of the International Test Commission.

'The post-covid effects of covid precautions'

The psychological effects of lockdowns and other precautions have not been explicitly recognised, but psychologists everywhere are working to undo the social, emotional and communicative damage they caused. The lockdowns meant that home visits were blocked, needy people were expected to be able to deal with their problems with only remote contact, and routine care visits became impossible. Mask-wearing, described as futile by other epidemiologists and medics but made compulsory nonetheless, brought its own problems for neurological as well as social reasons: it preventing exchanges of smiles, which is not trivial, it severely limited communication, and also raised issues of metacommunication and social representations which encouraged a fear of strangers and heightened everyday stresses.

As psychologists, we have extensive of knowledge of how people think and respond to situations. The processes of affiliation, social identification and social scripts are just three examples of this knowledge. We understand just why all this was so damaging, but we need to articulate it, and bring this knowledge to the fore in society. 

Psychologists everywhere are working to repair the damage, from addressing linguistic, social and educational deficits in children to assisting old people who have become inert and helpless where they were previously active and involved.  That specific epidemiological effort to prevent the spread of a single disease caused so may problems in so many areas that we need to find better ways of dealing with these challenges. As psychologists we understand the processes and mechanisms which have produced many of the problems caused by the precautions, so it is incumbent on us to make them better known.

Workshops

Mia Pal

Mia Pal is a criminology security and defence expert who has dedicated her life to working with victims of psychological abuse and trauma in her private practice. She is a doctoral researcher with a focus on practical application of cybernetics on social and living systems, early psychological prevention programmes in schools and how policy change in the domestic abuse area can lead to new societal behaviours. Mia's work in the field of security and criminology has led her to be an active voice in the fight against psychological abuse and she has worked with multiple victim's support groups, organisations and individuals to help them break the cycle and say No to abuse.  She believes that all people have a right to live free from psychological violence and control from intimate partners, co-workers or family members. 

Mia is currently a senior associate and advisor for the International Conflict and Security Consulting (INCAS) organisation, member of the British Society of Criminology, member of the Cybernetics Society and she is serving as CoChair of British Psychological Society (BPS) Northwest Branch where she continues to make a positive impact on the community by developing programs and events to advance the understanding of psychology in young people.

Deconstructing Psychological Abuse Reality- An Interactive , Engaging Experience

This workshop aims to inform delegates on the reality of psychological abuse and to engage participants in exploring the hidden face of psychological abuse step by step. Psychological abuse is a form of maltreatment that can have serious consequences on victims, and yet it often goes unrecognized or minimized. It is one of the most dangerous enemies of our modern society that hides in plain sight within the home and close relationships where implicit trust and feelings of safety are supposed to prevail. The devastating effects of abuse on mental health and homelessness are multifaceted and long-lasting. Victims who flee their abusers are often left homeless or forced to continue living with the abuser out of fear of losing their homes. This reality is not always visible to outsiders as the abuse can incubate for years or even decades. However, it is crucial that victims find resources and support to break free from this cycle of abuse. Only with awareness, education, and intervention can we hope to eradicate abuse and its damaging consequences on mental health and homelessness.

In this workshop, we'll be exploring the reality behind domestic abuse and how it can manifest in relationships. We will discuss some of the common dynamics at play in abusive relationships, and identify strategies for prevention and intervention.

Learning outcomes :

·Learn about different types of psychological abuse (i.e., passive aggression or gaslighting)

· Learn how each type of psychological abuse plays out in relationships between spouses or romantic partners (and even among friends )

·Learn why they're so difficult to spot at first glance

·Learn what you can do if you suspect someone close to you might be suffering from one type of the abuse

Have a query?

Contact us at [email protected]