Queen Mary University of London (coordinating centre)

Dr. Nikolina Jovanovic, the Principal Investigator for the IMPULSE project is a Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Lecturer based at the Unit for Social and Community Psychiatry.

Dr. Manuela Russo is the project manager for the IMPULSE study. She is a psychologist and a PhD in psychosis; her research interests include cognitive functioning of psychotic disorders, the phenomenology of severe mental illness, and psychosocial interventions.

Tamara Pemovska joined the coordinating team of the IMPULSE project in 2018 as a research assistant. She holds an MSc in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a Bachelor of Science from University College Utrecht. Her research interests include implementation science, health innovation, health inequalities, comorbidity, and non-communicable diseases.

Teodora Popnikolova joined the coordinating team in 2021 as a research assistant. She holds an MSc in Global Mental Health from King's College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a BSc in Psychology from Glasgow University. Her main interests and experience include LMICs research, child and adolescent mental health, design and evaluation of mental health programmes, implementation, economic evaluation, health systems and qualitative research.

The Unit for Social and Community Psychiatry conducts research on social interactions ('what happens between people') in mental health care, including developing and evaluating innovative interventions, with a leading role in wide international collaborations. It is also involved in teaching and the evaluation and improvement of services.

The Unit is jointly operated by Queen Mary University of London, and East London NHS Foundation Trust. It was established in 1997 and is located in the London Borough of Newham, in East London, a traditionally multi-ethnic area and the site of the 2012 Olympic Games. Since 2012, the Unit is a World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre (the only one specifically for Mental Health Service Development worldwide). The Head of the Unit is Professor Stefan Priebe.

The team of the Unit consists of about 30 full-time researchers, PhD students and managerial/administrative staff. They work on a range of studies, which often involve interdisciplinary collaboration with social sciences and humanities. The research addresses concepts, methods, and practice of social psychiatry, and includes historical and epidemiological aspects, evaluation of care in naturalistic and experimental studies, and the development and testing of innovative treatment methods, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Trials on novel interventions are conducted in collaboration with the registered Pragmatic Clinical Trials Unit at Queen Mary University of London. 

 

QMUL Team (Aysegul Dirik, Nikolina Jovanovic, Tamara Pemovska)
QMUL Team (Manuela Russo)

 

Unit for Social and Community Psychiatry

Chris is a Health Economist at the Centre for Evaluation and Methods, Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London. Chris holds an MSc degree in Health Economics and Management from the University of Sheffield. Prior to joining Queen Mary University of London, Chris worked in the Clinical Trials Unit at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Chris currently provides health economics support in clinical trials in mental health and inflammatory bowel disease.

Yan Feng, BSc, MSc, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Health Economics. Before joining Queen Mary University of London in 2018 as a Senior Lecturer, Yan worked as a Senior Economist at the Office of Health Economics (London, UK), and a Research Assistant at the Health Economics Research Unit, University of Aberdeen. She is an Associate Editor of the Health and Quality of Life Outcomes.