Eolene Boyd

Eolene M. Boyd, PhD, is a social psychologist conducting research within the framework of public mental health promotion to research, design, and test community-based interventions that increase self-regulation, resilience and social cohesion and reduce destructive social polarisation, conflict, exclusion, marginalisation and inequalities. She is Assistant Research Professor, Programme Co-Director of Integrative Complexity Research, and Co-Founder of the IC-ADAPT Consortium, Department of Psychiatry. 

Eolene uses participatory, collaborative, and community-based research methods to develop and test contextually informed and culturally sensitive research programmes that promote wellbeing and multi-levelled resilience using the interactionist cognitive processing model of IC or ‘integrative complexity’ (Suedfeld, 2010). 

The two IC variables of differentiation and integration represent the developmental progression of self-regulation that underlies all social and emotional skills and competencies (Boyd-MacMillan and DeMarinis, 2020). Her IC research targets these processes when individuals/groups engage with social differences and disagreements, and tests for increased collaborative capacities and resilience. Public and Practitioner Involvement and Engagement (PPIE), as well as investigator and participant self-reflexive and debrief protocols to safeguard and promote mental wellbeing among all involved in the research process, are both integral to her research.

Eolene’s IC work led to co-founding the IC-ADAPT Consortium together with medical faculty from Sweden (Prof Valerie DeMarinis, Dr Maria Nordendahl), Australia (Prof Derrick Silove, Cambridge Senior Visiting Scholar), and Australia/New York (Dr Alvin Tay). Linking two interdisciplinary, evidence-based models, the eco-psychosocial IC-ADAPT model is applicable across the lifecycle and has validity across cultures and contexts. IC-ADAPT bridges individuals/family groups and structures/systems through a community focus. 

Recently, Eolene developed a study protocol to identify the essential ingredients to promote substance use recovery after treatment among 16–20-year-olds, with Dr Dickon Bevington as a practitioner mentor and Prof Dame Carol Black as an Advisor. Prof Karen Ersche, Prof John Suckling, and Dr Dickon Bevington are also mentors. 

Eolene co-led the integration of the IC and ADAPT models to propose a new model and analytical framework, COping through Differentiation and Integration to Adapting (CODIA), with Prof Chris Baumann (Macquarie), Prof Derrick Silove (UNSW), and Prof Valerie DeMarinis (Umeå and Innlandet Hospital Trust). 

She was invited to contribute to a project led by Prof Jagdip Singh (Case Western Reserve), Prof Chris Baumann, and Prof Fei Guo (Macquarie), using a social sensing approach with AI/ ML to study collective resilience and collective resistance among US, Australian, and UK frontline healthcare workers during the pandemic. This is being feasibility and acceptability tested in an NIHR-funded study with social workers and community organisation staff. 

She was also invited to contribute to a new model and analytical framework proposing an indirect relationship between school uniforms and academic performance, led by Prof Chris Baumann, with Dr Shenghan Cai (Macquarie), Prof Fei Guo, and Dr Peter Hinton (Oxford). 

Eolene leads the 'Public and Mental Health, Ageing, and the Brain' (PHAB) group in the Psychiatry Department, which includes Assistant Research Professor Jane Fleming, Assistant Research Professor Caroline Lee, Dr Calum Mattocks, Dr Jonathan Goodman, Andy Cowan, and Katia Asfalto, along with visiting scholars Sally Hunter, Dr Katherine Parkin, Dr Angelique Mavrodaris, Dr Ledia Alushi, Dr Seb Walsh, PPIE Co-Leads, Ndai Nyamazazare and Doris Mustsando, and from Clinical Neuroscience, Henry Musto. Eolene also supervises Cambridge doctoral candidate Luma Bashmi (King’s).