Dr Joanna McParland
Reader in Health Psychology
Department of Psychology
Joanna McParland is a Reader in Health Psychology in the Department of Psychology. She leads the Workplace Wellness Hub affiliated with the Ageing Well Research Group in the Research Centre for Health and is Deputy Lead of the Aging Well Research Group.
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 and wellbeing outcomes among employees with chronic pain and examining the impact of employee work attitudes on the experience of pain.
Joanna is the Editor of the journal Health Psychology Open, is a Senior Editor of Europe’s Journal of Psychology and is a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Health Psychology.
Current doctoral supervision includes projects involving intervention design among employees with chronic pain and employers from small to medium enterprises, and examining the need and preference for interventions among parents who have a child with a chronic health condition.