Professor Joanna McParland
Professor of Health Psychology
Department of Psychology
Professor Joanna McParland is a Professor of Health Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Glasgow Caledonian University. She co-leads the Ageing Well Research Group within the Research Centre for Health and lead the Workplace Wellness Hub affiliated with the group.
Joanna has been Principal Investigator on a number of projects funded by organisations including the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Chief Scientist Office, Economic and Social Research Council, British Academy and Carnegie Trust. Joanna has a special interest in understanding the impact of social psychological processes (including social justice cognitions and resilience/flourishing) in the experience of pain in specific contexts (for example workplace and family context). She is also interested in using behaviour change constructs (such as behaviour change techniques and theoretical constructs) to understand how interventions work to promote health and work outcomes in different contexts, including the workplace and clinical contexts. She has led numerous projects adopting a range of research methodologies, including questionnaire methodology, interviews, focus groups and Q-methodology, with a focus on analysis techniques including interpretative phenomenological analysis and thematic analysis.
Recent work includes research related to understanding the experiences of fathers who have a child with a chronic pain condition, mapping the content of interventions seeking to improve work outcomes among employees with chronic pain and examining the impact of employee work attitudes on the experience of pain.
Joanna is Co-Editor of the journal Health Psychology Open, is Co-Chair of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) Social Aspects of Pain Special Interest Group and is a member of the IASP Fellowship, Grants and Awards Working Group.
Joanna has supervised several PhD students located within the UK and Europe. Current doctoral supervision includes projects involving intervention design among employees with chronic pain and employers from small to medium enterprises and understanding the need of those living with a chronic health condition.