Stella Chan founded Project Soothe in 2015, and since then her team has collected over 800 soothing images from members of the public from over 30 countries. Project Soothe is a unique citizen science project putting public engagement into the heart of clinical psychology research. Over the past year, the team has been working with 10 teams of young citizen scientist teams across a diverse background, from educational to forensic and support services for young people, co-producing innovative wellbeing tools based on these images. Later this month a Project Soothe feature will be launched in CogniCare, an app for carers of people with dementia, in collaboration with CogniHealth and the newly established Advanced Care Research Centre at the University. In this talk, Stella will share her Project Soothe journey over the past five years.

Stella Chan is Reader in Clinical Psychology at the School of Health in Social Science at The University of Edinburgh, and formerly an honorary clinical psychologist at the local NHS child and adolescent mental health service. She was co-chair of the prestigious Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Young Academy of Scotland, trustee of the RSE SCIO and member of the RSE International Committee. She is winner of the British Psychological Society Public Engagement and Media Award and fellow of the BPS.

Chaired by Arianna Andreangeli, Senior Lecturer in European Law.

First broadcast on Wednesday 11 November, 2020.