Ruth Knight
Psychologist interested in social identity, marginalisation, and mental health. Senior lecturer at York St John. Also to be found turning off all the big lights. Autistic + EDSetc.
- Supervision meetings with every PhD student today. Very much enjoyed the variety of activities (coffee in a cafe, sitting on the floor sketching out the next semester, laughing about weird papers). Realized that supervision is often the highlight of my job, because these students are just so fab.
- Happy that the last chapter of my PhD is published. We explored the different effects that of viewing the same fitspiration images in the lab or on Instagram. Instagram seems to be especially potent in terms of body image, particularly for those who already have some disordered eating.
- This feels particularly relevant given the resurgence in diet related content across social media. Perhaps thinking further about what it is about these platforms that makes them so influential for body image might be one way we can develop a different narrative. jsomer.org/index.php/pu...
- Grateful to @cejpreston.bsky.social for her help getting each chapter of my PhD published over the last few years. For transparency, this paper was desk rejected five times before review and went through one round of revisions.
- New paper!! Excited to share our new piece outlining an ECR perspective on children and young people's mental health research. We offer suggestions around funding, research practice, and institutional governance and processes to support a more socially just, equitable, and rigorous science.
- We hope to highlight actions that can be taken by individuals across all levels and shine a light on the unique perspectives that early career researchers can bring to the barriers that we all face.
- Many thanks to @olademk.bsky.social @josefienbreedvelt.bsky.social @eleanorchats.bsky.social as well as all of our co-authors, and @mhrincubator.bsky.social for bringing us together!
- Thoroughly enjoyed a day at the Institute for Health and Care Improvement's research showcase yesterday. Had the chance to share some findings and lessons from a current project with @ercaldwell.bsky.social, meet new people, and learn about the range of coproduced projects across disciplines here.
- Here in beautiful Utrecht for the first time at #BRNet2025, ready to present our poster on co-production in body representation research today!
- Hosted the first meeting of the Yorkshire Eating Disorder Research Network today. Despite a heavy dose of imposter syndrome-induced nerves earlier, it was great to share discussions about challenges, facilitators, and priorities with others who understand the challenges of working in this area.
- We brought together people across sectors and hope to meet regularly moving forwards. Let me know if you'd like to be added to our mailing list! Thanks @cejpreston.bsky.social for reassuring me I could do it, and @ercaldwell.bsky.social and @gburton221.bsky.social for hosting discussions.
- A great lab day out yesterday to present some research with @gburton221.bsky.social and @ercaldwell.bsky.social at a @tewv.bsky.social research event. Brilliant to hear about the projects being done through the trust and their ongoing commitment to real coproduction. Also got to see some ducklings!
- Looking forward to our next meeting in a few weeks!
- Our next meeting will be on 23rd June from 13.00 - 14.00. Sign up at this link: shorturl.at/3U5sB We hope to see you there!
- Reposted by Ruth KnightJust out! Our peer-reviewed critique of the Cass Review has been published by BMC Medical Research Methodology. Please read and share. We show that the Cass Review is fatally flawed and should not be the basis for policy or practice in transgender healthcare. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
- Day two in Edinburgh; looking forward to hearing about the incredible research that is being done across the Eating Disorder Research Network. Any conference with @edaceatingautism.bsky.social branded fidget spinners gets my vote!
- It was a great day with lots of inspiring and thought-provoking research presented. Finished off on a high with an hour talking about collaborations in the sun with @drkaithomas95.bsky.social ☀️☀️
- A great first day in (sunny!) Edinburgh at the Eating Disorder ECR Network event. So valuable to share conversations about the context we're in, especially around funding and coproduction. It can be a lonely space and these events really help to combat that isolation.
- Being on a two and a half hour long train journey is a really good time to completely dismantle an article. Just cut about six pages and it's already all the better for it. @harrietbarratt.bsky.social we are doing The Thing and it's strangely liberating!
- Getting excited for the #BRNet conference in July! Will be presenting work around coproducing body representation research with @gburton221.bsky.social + @ercaldwell.bsky.social and get to travel with brilliant collaborators like @cejpreston.bsky.social + @annacrossland.bsky.social. Can't wait!
- Absolute joy to be bringing this network together with @ruthndwrites.bsky.social!
- First LENS meeting today was so good! 32 academic mental health researchers with lived experience of mental ill health, all supporting each other and reflecting on our shared joys and challenges. More of that please! Thanks @mhrincubator.bsky.social for funding this @lensmentalhealth.bsky.social
- I've come away from our first meeting feeling such a wave of appreciation for community, solidarity, and the bravery and wisdom of everyone who is trying to disrupt the professional-personal binary in mental health research. Looking forward to next time very much!
- Are you interested in marginalization and how this influences eating disorders? We have space for 3 more group members to contribute to a research project on these issues. We have funding to pay for attendance at four meetings; the role can be as involved as you wish. Get in touch for more details!
- For me, so much of doing coproduction with young people can be summed up in this photo. We hear alot about outputs, impact, publications, but less about this: hanging out and eating a takeaway. I do really believe, though, that this is the foundation for the rest of it. (1/n)
- Building real relationships takes time, and often it takes not really 'doing' anything. Last night we spent a few hours eating a McDonald's, wandering campus, and chatting about the film we will make as part of our Institute for Social Justice Community Research Grant. (2/n)
- There aren't any measurable 'outputs' from last night, nothing I could show a traditional funder to convince them that we do actually need money to hang out before we do anything specific. But there are tangibly stronger relationships, shared experience, and a lot of laughter. (3/n)
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View full threadGetting to be part of a whole research team that is entirely on the same page is a joy, and our Co-Is @drlornaham.bsky.social and @carolepugh.bsky.social make up such a brilliant team. For anyone invested in the culinary decisions of teenagers, "picky bits" have been requested for next time! (6/6)
- Happy to have a chapter in upcoming collection on double empathy, coauthored with @drlornaham.bsky.social - we consider double empathy in the HE classroom drawing on our experience and inclusive approaches. pavpub.com/health-and-s...
- Reposted by Ruth KnightLate to the party due to forgetting BlueSky exists but! I'm super proud of this piece and look forward to taking this train of thought further in the future TL;DR of it: BMI should be used with careful and specifc consideration, nuance, and contextual acknowledgement #BMI
- New #ECR blog posts! 🔥 Georgie Burton @gburton221.bsky.social dives into the (in)appropriateness of Body Mass Index (#BMI), exploring its history, its role in discrimination, and whether these measures should even be used. Read her thought-provoking analysis here: shorturl.at/sPq7y
- Reposted by Ruth Knight"If lived experience is mediated, edited, and filtered to fit institutional needs, does it still belong to those who lived it?" @projectsoulstride.bsky.social unpacks the increasing sanitisation of lived experience, and calls for a fundamental shift in the movement. www.nsun.org.uk/lived-experi...
- Reposted by Ruth KnightSign up to learn about the new Lived Experience Network for Scholars (LENS). Alongside presentations from organisers Dr Ruth Naughton-Doe and Dr Ruth Knight, McPin will be sharing advice on managing lived experience disclosure. 1st May 1pm-2.30pm #research www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lived-expe...
- Sign up link here!
- 🙌Very excited to share our new support network for mental health and/or addiction research academics with lived experience. We have called it LENS (Lived Experience Network for Scholars). Read more and sign up on Eventbrite for our 1st online meeting in May: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lived-expe...
- Super excited about an upcoming project with @ruthndwrites.bsky.social (kindly funded by @mhrincubator.bsky.social) If you're a mental health researcher with lived experience, watch this space!
- Reposted by Ruth KnightCome and be part of a really important project investigating how changing the recruitment, relationships and redeployment of early career researchers could improve research culture
- Reposted by Ruth KnightRomana and I were delighted to be interviewed for @acamh.bsky.social about our recent scoping review about Patient and Public Involvement methods in child and adolescent mental health. You can listed to the podcast here! acamhlearn.org/Learning/No_...
- Reposted by Ruth KnightThis week has not been ideal. I realise there is a lot going on at the moment, but the previously somewhat slow but now feels more rapid crisis unfolding in UK HE is really hitting close to home at present
- Reposted by Ruth KnightWho hasn’t been innocently hanging out at the inauguration of a man dubbed by people in his own party as the next Hitler and accidentally performed a Nazi salute that could only be more blatant if it was accompanied by a tiny finger moustache? thedailytism.com/the-autistic...
- Festive coffee scheming with @cejpreston.bsky.social this morning, planning to overhaul the eating disorder research universe. Having a PhD supervisor who has turned into such an amazing mentor and collaborator makes me feel very lucky.
- Reposted by Ruth KnightI often tell my advanced graduate students who are looking to get their work published that, if you're not getting multiple journal rejections, you're not doing your job right. So, to provide continuing inspiration, I've uploaded the annual update to my CV of Journal Article Rejections:
- Reposted by Ruth KnightThere should be a word for wealthy white cishet men who suddenly embrace being autistic solely to try to avoid accountability for their shitty behavior.
- Snowflake on nose situation.
- Reposted by Ruth KnightLast weeks graduation from YSJ. Proud to have gratuated with a distinction, Masters by Research in Psychology. Very grateful for the women who took part in my research and for a wonderfully supportive supervisor @ruthknight.bsky.social. 🥂👩🎓
- Reposted by Ruth KnightMy father lost 4 siblings before the age of 10 to diseases for which we now routinely have vaccines: polio and smallpox. (Abetted by the British policy of inflicting famine on the region.) Those aunts & uncles would be alive today, and I would gladly trade them for RFK & his minions.
- Had a meeting with the film-maker (www.jonnyrandall.co.uk/about) who will hopefully be working on our coproduced project with The Island funded by the Institute for Social Justice. I love getting to collaborate with super creative and interesting people to share research findings; perk of the job.
- A related thought: people outside of academia have been thinking about collaboratively and accessibly sharing information in all kinds of ways for a long time. There's alot we can learn from working with them; knowledge isn't held in the academy.
- Reposted by Ruth KnightMy first post on this platform is a good one! Celebrating our post doc Emy's recent publication reviewing eating disorder treatment outcomes for Autistic people. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
- Reposted by Ruth Knight[This post could not be retrieved]
- This! So many participants I have worked with have said that they just want us to try - that effort itself will be so valued, even if we get it wrong.
- So fortunate to have the best Masters students. Yesterday Cheryl graduated with an MRes and today she presented her project to our research group. She is an exceptional, reflexive, and considerate researcher and it was such a joy to be her supervisor. Also look at those slides!
- I'm recruiting for an RA on a mixed methods project hoping to co-produce a more intersectional understanding of EDs. At the mo it will be 1.5 days a week for 9 months, with some flexibility on when/where. Please share widely and let me know if you have Qs! Link here shorturl.at/uoPOj
- Reposted by Ruth KnightI see we’re confusing “punk rock” with “being a shitty bigot” again
- We're recruiting for a new Associate Head at YSJ Psychology! Exciting opportunity to get to lead a friendly and inclusive community doing ambitious and interesting research. Please share! jobs.yorksj.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...
- Brilliant talk on mental imagery and CBT by @blackwellse.bsky.social at YSJ Psychology this evening. Got me thinking about the role of imagery and EDs... Also especially good to see our foundation year students brave enough to ask questions!
- Reposted by Ruth KnightSuper exciting role available - a Chair in Mental Health in our wonderful department! Please come and work with us and the growing group of MH researchers (both in the Department and across the broader uni and region). Please share, and I'm more than happy to chat to anyone keen! #PsychSciSky
- This, but I also particularly enjoyed the Koyaanisqatsi reference in this episode.
- There is a joke in the first 3 minutes of this that like 2% of our listeners are going to get and I'm so proud of it. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...
- Reposted by Ruth KnightMuch of the discussion of open science centers on detecting fraud or errors, but a big, and arguably bigger, benefit is in efficiency. Take the simple example of code. How much collective time is lost when scholars start from scratch, rather than building (w/ attribution) on other scholars' code?
- Reposted by Ruth Knight"Still punk rock," I whisper as I lower myself gingerly into a hot bath full of epsom salts.
- Reposted by Ruth Knight[This post could not be retrieved]
- Super cool new work (don't often say that re coggy) from YSJ colleagues Jen and Helgi about autistic traits and mental time travel. Love seeing neurodiversity informed ideas outside of typical areas. This really exemplifies for me how we can implement a ND approach in psych research more generally.
