Dr Linda O'neill
Senior Lecturer
Biography
As a senior lecturer and Chartered Psychologist, Dr O'Neill's main focus lie within the areas of teaching and research. One of her other valued roles is as the Disability Link Tutor for the School of Psychology. An important part of the role is to develop good relationships with members of staff from the Disability office and Student Services, this is necessary to ensure that the best provision is being made for individual psychology students who might require additional support to achieve parity and progression with other students throughout their university stay. A more recent role for Dr O'Neill involves the setting up and being co-lead in a Neurodiversity Special Interest Group. This is a collaboration between University of Chester and the Centre for Autism, Neuro-Developmental Disorders, and Intellectual Disability (CANDDID). She aims to bring together those working in the field of neurodevelopmental conditions, intellectual disability, education, medical law, ethics, gender studies, training, and research. This will allow Dr O'Neill and other members of University of Chester academic staff and students to foster links between regional academics, including neurodivergent academics, NHS clinical staff, local authorities, lived experience researchers and students interested in neurodiversity. The aim of the group is to set up a collaborative platform for developing new ideas, co-producing new projects, developing a network, and creating the opportunity for adding to the academic literature. The group will also consider opportunities for joint funding applications. Dr O'Neill envisages that the group will act as an internal peer reviewer for protocols, funding applications, and developing research projects.
Teaching and Supervision
Dr O'Neill's main teaching area is in Developmental Psychology. She teaches at undergraduate and especially at postgraduate level, where I am module leader on Developmental Psychology for Conversion, one of the core modules that allows students who have previously studied for degrees in other areas, to gain the Graduate Basis of Chartered Membership granted by the British Psychology Society, demonstrating they have covered psychology in sufficient depth to go on to study for doctorates as a professional psychologist. I also lead the module for Psychology of Parenting and Education, and teach on Developmental Psychology for undergraduates, the Psychology of Identity, Community and Diversity, Becoming a Psychological Researcher, Child and Adolescent Development and Family Lifestyle and Transition. Dr O'Neill supervises dissertation students at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Dr O'Neill has been nominated by the students at the Above and Beyond Awards for the Most Outstanding Personal Academic Tutor (PAT) and the Most Inspiring Lecturer.
Research and Knowledge Exchange
Dr O'Neill's research examines the long-term effects of disabilities upon adult siblings and the reasons behind the increased propensity of some of these siblings towards anxiety and depression. Perceived parenting, adult attachment styles, personality traits and the impact of different disability types are some of the areas that are explored. This is a relatively understudied area and consequently she hopes to recognize potential problematic areas in order to inform future interventions, clinical therapies and policy and practice to try to ensure the future wellbeing of these siblings. Her research mainly involves quantitative methodological analyses. Dr O'Neill is one of the members of staff who are considered REF returnable for the School of Psychology. She currently has two papers that are going through the final preparation stages ready for submission, where she is the lead author on both publications and intends to submit to high impact journals for this subject area. She also has sufficient data already collected that will be provide for at least two additional quantitative articles and one qualitative /mixed methods article to be written up and submitted. She has also recently been approached by another colleague wanting to collaborative work – this would be a slight deviation from her usual area – but still highly relevant, nonetheless. This is still in the planning stages.