Hello everyone, we have some exciting news! Andrea Vaughan, Pauline Rivart, Bijaya Biswal and Madison Kitchen are joining the netECR leadership team, bringing a fantastic mix of expertise, professional and lived experiences, and cultural perspectives. We are delighted to welcome them and excited about what we can build together for our community around the world.
For the past three years, Tiago Zortea, Susie Bennett, Katerina Kavalidou, and Hazel Marzetti have been leading netECR, but struggling with availability. With Andrea, Pauline, Bijaya and Madison joining us, we are expanding our capacity to connect suicide & self-harm researchers, support one another and create more opportunities for our members to get involved.
What began as a monthly online journal club in November 2015 has grown into an independent, international network of more than a hundred early and mid-career researchers working in suicide and self-harm research, with members across all continents. At the heart of netECR is horizontal mentorship: learning from one another, sharing ideas and offering support as peers. Our growing leadership team brings that spirit to life through different disciplines, research interests and experiences.
Andrea Vaughan is a PhD student at University College London’s Institute of Education in the UK. Her research explores linguistic markers of mental health difficulties, particularly suicidal ideation and depression, on social media. With interests in research synthesis, health communication and the statistics used in corpus linguistics, Andrea brings a fascinating perspective on what language can tell us about mental health. We are excited to have her insights in our conversations about how we research and communicate suicidal experiences.
Pauline Rivart is a Research Assistant at the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide, Homicide and Safety in Mental Health at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research focuses on suicide among mental health patients and suicide bereavement. Pauline is passionate about putting evidence into practice and has worked closely with NHS Trusts across England on national quality improvement projects addressing self-harm and suicide risk assessment. Her perspective also draws on personal experiences of suicide bereavement and caring for people at risk of suicide. We warmly welcome this combination of research, service improvement and lived experience.
Bijaya Biswal is a medical doctor, mental health researcher and lived experience advocate pursuing her PhD at University College London, UK. Her work explores the intersectional determinants of suicide, alongside interests in loneliness, deinstitutionalisation and the relationship between identity and mental health. Bijaya is also committed to making academia more accessible and inclusive for survivor-researchers, as well as for those in the Global South. We are thrilled to welcome her perspectives and her commitment to a research community where people with different experiences have the space and support to contribute.
Madison Kitchen is a PhD student at New York University in the United States. Her research examines differences in help-seeking behaviours during suicidal crises, the impact of policy on suicide, and the mental health of military-connected family members. Madison brings an exciting range of interests spanning individual experiences, families and policy. Her work opens up valuable conversations about how people seek support and how the contexts around them shape their experiences.
Together, these four new leaders bring fresh questions, different ways of thinking and a wealth of experience to share. For an international network, that diversity matters: our members work across different cultures, research traditions and settings, and our community is richer when those perspectives can meet.
We are really looking forward to turning this shared energy into opportunities for connection, collaboration and mutual support, whether through a conversation on Discord, chats on social media, feedback on a research idea, a blog that starts a discussion or one of our ongoing initiatives.
Andrea, Pauline, Bijaya and Madison: welcome to the team! We are so excited to begin this next chapter of netECR with you and our worldwide community.
With lots of love,
netECR Community
