Role
Dr Juliet Wakefield is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology in the Department of Psychology at NTU.
Career overview
Juliet completed her PhD in Social Psychology at the University of Dundee in 2011. Her PhD research concerned the act of help-seeking, and investigated whether group members may use help-seeking as a tool to manage and enhance their group's image in the eyes of others.
Juliet then spent four years as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Dundee, working on Professor Fabio Sani's ESRC-funded Health In Groups project. This project investigated the relationships between membership of social groups (family, community, sports groups, etc.) and health.
Juliet joined NTU in August 2015.
Research areas
Juliet is a member of the Groups, Identities, and Health research group. Within this, she is a member of the Social Identity research group. In general terms, Juliet's research interests lie within the domains of Social Identity Approach, and the implications of group membership for people's everyday lives.
One key strand of her research involves exploring help-giving and help-seeking from a social identity perspective. This includes contexts within which helping transactions are problematic or stigmatised, such as foodbanks.
Another key strand of her research involves investigating Social Cure and Social Curse processes in everyday contexts. This includes investigating the importance of social groups for the wellbeing of vulnerable populations such as those experiencing poverty, those experiencing suicidal ideation, those experiencing loneliness, and young parents. She also investigates these processes in more general populations: for instance, she has explored the effects of group identification on community samples' sleep quality, health behaviour, depressive symptomology, and satisfaction with life.
Opportunities arise to carry out postgraduate research towards an MPhil / PhD in the areas identified above. Further information may be obtained on the NTU Research Degrees website https://www.ntu.ac.uk/research/research-degrees-at-ntu
External activity
Juliet is an Editor for the Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, and Cogent Psychology.
She is active on Twitter, and has written for The Conversation.
She works with numerous external partners, including The Trussell Trust and Guru Nanak's Mission
She is a regular reviewer of manuscripts for a wide range of Social Psychology journals, including:
- The European Journal of Social Psychology
- The British Journal of Social Psychology
- Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
- Group Processes and Intergroup Relations
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology.
Sponsors and collaborators
External Collaborators include:
- Professor Fabio Sani (University of Dundee)
- Professor Nick Hopkins (University of Dundee)
- Dr. Ronni Michelle Greenwood (University of Limerick)
- Dr. Tegan Cruyws (Australian National University)
- Dr. Debra Gray (University of Winchester)
- Professor Dan Frings (London Southbank University)
- Dr. Sebastiano Costa (Università degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli)
External Sponsors include:
- National Institute for Health Research
- ImROC
- Nottinghamshire County Council
- Gedling Borough Council
- Economic and Social Research Council
- The Scottish Crucible (Royal Society of Edinburgh)
- University of Dundee
Press expertise
Topics include:
- social identity processes
- social cure/curse processes
- relevance of group memberships to everyday life
- intergroup and intragroup helping and help-seeking
- impact of groups on health and wellbeing, gender identity and national identity.