Jack Andrews

I am a Senior Research Fellow and Wellcome Early-Career Fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology, where I lead the Social Mental Health Lab.

My research investigates how social environments shape the emergence and maintenance of common mental health problems and how this knowledge can be used to design, evaluate, and improve interventions, with a particular focus on adolescence. 

My group's work currently focuses on:

Social networks and adolescent mental health
How do peer relationships (e.g., friendships) and peer influences (e.g., social contagion and co-rumination) shape mental-health trajectories across adolescence? 
How do social-cognitive processes (e.g., social working memory and perspective-taking) support the navigation of social networks? 

School-based mental-health interventions
Why do some interventions succeed, fail, or produce unintended effects in real-world school settings?
Can we improve evidence-based practice through novel ways to evaluate interventions?

Measuring what matters
Which outcomes best capture the impact of mental-health difficulties on young people’s lives? 

We use a combination of methods to answer these questions including behavioural experiments, social network analysis, longitudinal modelling and intervention designs, such as randomised controlled trials. 

Funding and previous roles

My research is currently funded by the Wellcome Trust and University College, Oxford, where I hold the Stevenson JRF in Medical Sciences (Psychology). Prior to joining Oxford, I read Psychological & Behavioural Sciences at Cambridge and completed my PhD at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. I then spent a couple years in Australia as a postdoc at UNSW and the University of Sydney.

Graduate student (DPhil) applicants: If you're interested in undertaking a DPhil (PhD) on related topics then please get in touch, and ideally well before the application deadline to help maximise your chances.