Biography

Harriet is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Westminster as well as a Workplace Practitioner. With many years of professional experience in youth work, homelessness and the drugs field, she decided to enter full-time education as a mature student and graduated from her first degree at this university, subsequently joining the teaching team as a Visiting Lecturer in 1998.  Harriet (who prefers to be called ‘Harry’) went on to train as a Counselling Psychologist at City University and, alongside her part-time work as a Lecturer, she works as a Counselling Psychologist in a range of workplace settings including a women’s centre and her small private practice.  She also provides Group Clinical Supervision to a number of staff teams in drugs projects across London, and workplace training to voluntary sector organisations.

Harriet builds on her CPD (continuing professional development) in ways that relate to her teaching, counselling and training work.  Undertaking the PGCertHE has advanced her teaching skills and she has a keen interest in developing students’ critical thinking abilities. She has done extended courses in related areas such as mindfulness and life coaching, and regularly takes part in collaborative supervision groups at the Institute of Group Analysis and City University.

Teaching

Harry teaches on a number of different psychology modules, mainly relating directly or indirectly to the area of social/interpersonal psychology. These include Social Psychology and Individual Differences at level 5 and, at level 6, Advanced Social Psychology, The Psychology of Counselling, The Psychology of Prejudice, Critical Psychology and Occupational Psychology. Harry also teaches on the Graduate Diploma in Psychology course. At undergraduate levels she has also taught Forensic Psychology, The Psychology of Women, Developmental and Advanced Developmental Psychology and supervised students’ research projects (although she unfortunately doesn’t have capacity to do this at the moment).

Interests

Harry is passionate about equality and justice in society as well as about environmental issues, and is involved in various campaign groups such as Greenpeace, Love Music Hate Racism, Oxfam and Friends of the Earth.  On a different note, she is very much enjoying being involved in the creation of a musical, a project that is taking much longer than anticipated!

Research

Harry has been involved in several research projects in the Psychology Department over the years, for example running a pilot study investigating first year psychology students’ learning experiences.