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!
- 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!
- 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
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- Thanks for giving us the resources and support to do so ☺️
- 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
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- Am also grateful for this because we got to have such an enjoyable evening ☺️
- 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)
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- Yep, I totally agree. We're always bound by the timeline of the project and that's not even nearly the same as the timeline of the relationships. Also agree re output! I'm interested in how we communicate those changes but it can seem invisible to external forces.
- I feel grateful for @cherylreid.bsky.social who is our RA, and has such an amazing capacity to just be with the young people we're working with, and Jonny Randall who is making the film for this project, and immediately 'got it' and met everyone exactly where they were. (5/n)
- Getting 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)
- 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)
- When we do come to doing the research in the typical sense, it will be better for this. But in a way that's not the point, we do this not just for rigour, but also because it's the right way to do research, I believe. Also, and I feel like this gets mentioned less, it is so much more fun! (4/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)
- 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...
- 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!
- 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.
- Snowflake on nose situation.
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- YES! I would really love that (but obviously not that you have new lived experience to draw on...) Shall we arrange a coffee/chat/rant/time together?
- Hiiiiii! 💜
- 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.
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- Epistemic humility is deeply important and far too scarce. Thanks for your bravery in it!
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- Great paper! Will be citing ❤️
- 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
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- Oh no, hard relate...
- 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!
- 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...
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- If you're running this in R, have you checked there are no glitches in your code? As others have said it sounds like it's just-identified, hence the fit indices aren't very meaningful, but this also happened to me once when I hadn't set the parameters correctly in my code.
- 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.
