Research Academy 2026 | Friday 24th April

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Innovative Insights: Creative Approaches to Psychotherapy Research

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• Applications to Practice – exploring research that directly informs and enhances therapeutic work, including decolonising practice through Ubuntu philosophy, movement‑based inquiry, and the creative use of clay and visual art to capture emotional and political dimensions.
• Qualitative Methods – delving into narrative and arts‑informed research techniques such as autoethnography, creative writing, and collaborative narrative inquiry, with a focus on giving voice to lived experiences and marginalised communities.
• Quantitative Methods – making data approachable and relevant through creative survey design, mixed‑methods integration, innovative use of statistics, and clinical trial designs that incorporate storytelling, puppetry, and guided imagery.

• Dr Nomsa‑Sandra Wayland – Decolonisation and epistemic justice in therapeutic research through Ubuntu philosophy.
• Dr Penny Osborne – Using movement and embodied artistic inquiry in research and practice.
• Dr Helena Kallner – How bodily knowledge shapes psychotherapeutic practice.
• Dr Fiona Hamilton – Creative writing as a research method.
• Dr Paul C. Mollitt – Autoethnography for exploring identity and marginalisation.
• Dr Steven Wells – Arts-influenced narrative inquiry with senior practitioners.
• Dr Sofie Bager‑Charleson & Karen Dempsey – Creative use of surveys and mixed-methods research.
• Dr Margarita Chacin – Creative tools in a clinical trial with children with cancer.
• Dr Giovanna Bucci – Creative statistical approaches in neuroscience-based psychotherapy research.

Schedule and Information on Presenters

Qualitative strands:
Workshop summary, proposed exercise, and biography

Stream 1

1. Decolonisation and Epistemic Justice: Researching Creatively for a Diversified Therapeutic Service – Examples from the Ubuntu Philosophy
By Dr Nomsa Wayland

Workshop Summary:

This presentation explores how decolonising research methodologies can address epistemic injustice and broaden the scope of therapeutic practice. Drawing on the African philosophy of Ubuntu: “I am because we are”, the session considers how relational, collaborative, and community-centred approaches can challenge dominant Eurocentric paradigms and foster epistemic diversity. Participants will be invited to reflect on the limitations of traditional psychological research, particularly in the context of the replication crisis and the exclusion of indigenous knowledge systems. Ubuntu offers an alternative paradigm that emphasises interconnectedness, reciprocity, and shared humanity, shifting research from extractive inquiry to relational accountability. Practical examples of Ubuntu-informed research will be presented, alongside a discussion of its application in psychotherapy and co-produced projects. The workshop will close with a reflective exercise, enabling participants to explore how “power with” rather than “power over” can be enacted in their own research and practice, creating therapeutic services that are inclusive, ethical, and socially just.

Proposed Exercise:

Participants will take part in a reflective circle dialogue. In small groups, they will consider how well they know the communities they serve, whose knowledge is being centred and whose is overlooked, and how their work might shift from “power over” to “power with.” The dialogue will close with shared insights on how relational accountability can be enacted in practice.

Biography:

Dr Nomsa-Sandra Wayland is a HCPC, BPS, BACP Chartered Counselling Psychologist and Senior Lecturer at the Metanoia Institute, where she teaches on the DCPsych programme. She is also a Clinical Tutor on the Clinical Doctorate at the University of East London (UEL), where she has contributed to multiple programmes, including the BSc in Counselling, MSc in Counselling and Psychotherapy, and short courses in Humanitarian Intervention.

Her research focuses on qualitative methodologies such as Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and Thematic Analysis (TA), with particular interest in racial trauma, moral injury, epistemic justice and decolonising therapeutic practice. Her doctoral research explored therapists’ experiences of working with Black clients presenting with race-based traumatic stress. She is also an advocate and engages in developing alternative psychological interventions for minority communities, including Ubuntu-inspired models and expressive therapies. Dr Wayland’s broader scholarship explores inclusive research methodologies, curriculum diversification, social justice, and mental health advocacy, with a strong commitment to addressing structural inequities in psychology.

2. How may movement shape psychotherapists’ practical knowledge?
By Dr Helena Kallner, PhD/DCPsych

Workshop Summary:

This experiential workshop focuses on both the role of practical and bodily knowledge in professional practice, and how it can be researched.

In a culture that privileges rational and measurable knowledge, other forms of knowing – such as practical and bodily knowing – are often overlooked or undervalued. Yet, in interpersonal professions like psychotherapy, coaching, and consulting, much of what unfolds between people happens beyond words, through felt movement dynamics.

This workshop builds on Dr Helena Kallner’s PhD research, titled “Forming Form: How Movement Shapes Psychotherapists’ Practical Knowledge”. Helena expands on the theory of Practical knowledge, employing a method that weaves together three threads:

1. Focus groups and individual interviews with psychotherapists.
2. Autoethnographic writing from my own psychotherapy practice.
3. Theoretical concepts

Through a dialogue between empirical material and theory, the workshop expands on movement as the root of experience, language, and knowing. In particular, it examines psychotherapists’ capacity to create holding in the therapeutic situation—described as a form of bodily knowing and a crucial professional skill cultivated through practice. Holding is characterised as pactive movement, indicating the capacity to remain receptive and responsive to situational specifics while discerning how to act.

The experiential aspect will be interwoven throughout the presentation. Theoretical concepts will be explored through guided movement experiments that help participants deepen awareness of their own bodily experience.

Biography:

Helena Kallner, PhD, is a UKCP and EAGT accredited Gestalt psychotherapist. Her academic background includes both qualitative and quantitative approaches to science, with studies in Ethnology and Public Health Science. She trained in Gestalt therapy at Metanoia Institute, where she later served as an assistant trainer. As a senior teacher and supervisor of Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy™, she teaches workshops and training programs internationally. Helena is based in Stockholm, where she runs a private practice. She is a full member of the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy, the founding institute of Gestalt therapy.

3. Using clay in research to develop expressive forms of therapeutic service
By Dr Lynne Souter-Anderson

Workshop Summary:

The use of clay in research offers new possibilities for developing expressive approaches within therapeutic services. This workshop, with its engaging title designed to spark curiosity, begins by examining what makes clay such a compelling medium for human creativity and expression.

The session highlights Lynne’s research into the application of clay in therapy. Discovering that her family history included five generations of potters, Lynne was naturally drawn to a heuristic research paradigm to guide her study.

The workshop invites researchers to consider how these insights can inform their own work. The story behind Lynne’s thesis reveals the experience of being a solitary advocate for a personally and professionally meaningful topic. It addresses the difficulties faced when one’s chosen field is little known, the challenge of conducting a literature review with scarce resources, and the process of gathering research data when professional experience as an art and pottery teacher of 27 years and a genuine passion for the subject were the foundations for sculpting a Doctoral thesis.

Lynne’s approach demonstrates how dedication and subject-matter passion can pave the way for new areas of scholarship, inspiring others to pursue underrepresented topics with confidence.

Creative Exercise:

'From the heat of the molten lava at the centre of the earth to the passion at the genesis of your research.'

A creative visualisation will be shared followed by discussions on the various stages of transformation and obstacles encountered in participants’ research interests. If, by any chance you have clay please bring it to the online conference workshop, if not, we will sculpt in our imagination!

Biography:

Dr Lynne Souter-Anderson’s professional journey is marked by decades of innovation, leadership, and dedication across education, ceramics and the arts, psychotherapy, and research.

After completing her doctoral studies at the Metanoia Institute in 2010, Lynne founded the Clay Therapy Community in 2012, responding to a growing need for specialized training in this area. That same year, she established a pioneering Clay Therapy training in the United Kingdom, which has since trained over 200 practitioners and contributed to the development of national standards in clay therapy. In 2021, Lynne further expanded access to this field by launching the online Practitioner Award in Clay Conversations, attracting participants from Europe, North America, and Asia, and fostering a global network of professionals dedicated to therapeutic work with clay.

Lynne’s expertise has been widely recognized: she is a Fellow of the National Counselling & Psychotherapy Society, an accredited Senior Supervisor with PTUK, and a registered Consultant Sandplay Therapist with the AST. Since 2022, her most recent role has been as a Research Supervisor with Metanoia Institute, where she guides and mentors the next generation of practitioners and researchers in creative and alternative therapies. Her private practice, based in Cambridgeshire, UK, offers psychotherapy to clients of all ages, as well as clinical supervision and consultancy. Lynne’s influence extends globally—she regularly receives invitations to present training and conference workshops, and her work has shaped curricula and best practices in creative arts therapies internationally. She is the author of several acclaimed books: Touching Clay, Touching What? The Use of Clay in Therapy (2010), which is considered a foundational text in the field; Making Meaning: Clay Therapy with Children and Adolescents (2015), which has become a resource for professionals worldwide; and Seeking Shelter, Seeking Safety. Clay Therapy with Families and Groups (2019), which explores the use of clay in collective healing.

4. Autoethnography: Writing the Self, Illuminating the Social
By Dr Paul C. Mollitt

Workshop Summary:

Autoethnography is a powerful research methodology that uses personal experience to illuminate broader cultural, political, and relational dynamics. It offers an accessible and deeply human way of engaging with complex social questions—particularly those relating to identity, marginalisation, and lived experience. This session introduces autoethnography as a rigorous, creative, and emotionally resonant approach to research. It speaks especially to those working within or alongside marginalised communities.

While many psychotherapy research institutions are open to qualitative work, autoethnography can still sit uneasily within academic frameworks. Its unapologetic subjectivity, blending of personal and cultural narrative, and frequent use of unconventional forms can prompt discomfort—even in researchers drawn to it. This session creates space to explore that tension, and offers a grounded, practice-based introduction to what autoethnography can do. For practitioner-researchers in particular, engaging in autoethnographic work can become an extension of the personal process that underpins our clinical practice. It allows us to explore our histories, identities, and unconscious positions in ways that complement—but are distinct from—therapy. In doing so, it can revitalise our work, challenge ingrained assumptions, and deepen our understanding of the cultures in which we and our clients are embedded.

Drawing on his doctoral research into gay minority stress, Dr Paul C. Mollitt will demonstrate how autoethnographic writing can serve as both method and meaning-making process—revealing not only lived experience but also systemic forces at play.

Proposed Exercise:

Participants will pair up to try a short reflective or creative writing prompt relating to self and identity in research. This will be followed by a large group discussion exploring the resistances that autoethnography can provoke—including common concerns about vulnerability, emotionality, and the fear of being seen as self-indulgent. Together, we’ll consider how these anxieties may actually reflect the method’s critical and transformative power.

Biography:

Dr Paul Mollitt is a BPC-registered and BACP Senior Accredited psychotherapist in independent practice, with 15 years’ experience in the NHS and higher education. He is a recent graduate of Metanoia’s Doctorate in Psychotherapy by Professional Studies and is currently training to become a group analyst. His research experience centres on the use of autoethnography to explore topics such as minority stress, Gender, Sex and Relationship Diversity Therapy (GSRD), contemporary psychodynamic practice, and LGBTQ+ lives, with future research that will look at cancer, group processes, and dreams.

Stream B

5. Using movement in research and practice
By Dr Penny Osborne

Workshop Summary:

In this workshop, Dr Penny Osborne explores the potential of movement-based practices to generate, deepen, and communicate knowledge in both therapeutic and research contexts. Drawing on Embodied Artistic Inquiry (EAI), the session introduces movement as a valid and rigorous epistemological tool. Participants will critically reflect on how embodied ways of knowing can enrich psychological inquiry and therapeutic encounters, especially within interview-based research. This workshop invites practitioners and researchers alike to challenge dominant cognitive paradigms and to engage the body as an active site of meaning-making.

Proposed Exercise:

Participants will be invited to engage in a guided movement-based interview exercise, working in pairs or small groups. One participant will take the role of the 'non-verbal-interviewee,' responding to a question through improvised gestures rather than speech. The other will serve as the "witness-interviewer," observing, sensing, and later offering reflective questions or feedback based on what they experienced. This will be followed by brief journaling and group discussion to explore how the gestures shaped understanding, insight, and relational dynamics within the process.

Biography:

Dr Penny Osborne is a Senior Lecturer in Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy, dance movement psychotherapist and a BPS-registered psychologist with a special interest in embodied and creative approaches to research and practice. With a background in psychology, psychotherapy, dance, and expressive arts, she brings an interdisciplinary lens to her work. Penny's doctoral research focused on Embodied Artistic Inquiry and the role of gesture and movement in knowledge production. She has extensive experience in training psychotherapists and facilitating embodied learning spaces, and she continues to explore how somatic practices can challenge conventional assumptions in psychology and research by offering alternative, body-based ways of knowing that expand and deepen traditional methodologies.

6. Using creative writing, arts and poetic methods in health research
By Dr Fiona Hamilton

Workshop Summary:

‘…there are activities and domains of participation in life that can only be accounted for realistically with qualitative methods, with poetic-mindedness’  Brady (2009)

There is a well-established context for arts-based inquiry within health research and practice. This includes uses of poetry, drama, and creative writing. This presentation describes three recent health-related projects in the UK where creative writing, poetry, public engagement and performance are central to inquiry. The first used poetry to widen participation in qualitative research in a collaboration with researchers at the University of Bristol that involved the voices and experiences of diverse groups around medical testing.

The second was co-creation of a play based on interviews with people with lived experience of pain arising from physical or mental states, in which two characters’ dialogue offers fresh perspectives and audience participation in conversations to expand understandings and open up spaces for further inquiry. The third was an educational programme for undergraduate medical students where narrative inquiry and creative writing enabled investigation of their own perceptions around health, illness, and treatment and provided a place to share these on a public digital platform.

Biography:

Fiona Hamilton is a writer, group facilitator and Head of Programme for Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes at Metanoia Institute. She specialises in poetry and collaborative projects focusing on lived experience and holistic practices. Projects include dance and poetry for performance exploring approaches to mental health; a play about pain and the therapeutic effects of music; mixed-arts installations addressing issues of human impact on natural and built environments; translation from French of autofiction with a theme of psychiatry and its limitations; and a poem-film about creativity in a digital climate-challenged era.

Her work in healthcare aims to open up conversations, combat stigma and enable freer, deeper and more truthful narratives. Fiona is Arts Lead for the National Centre for Integrative Medicine, co-founder of the Climate Choir Movement and has been Chair of Lapidus, the International Organisation for Writing for Wellbeing and presenter at its Creative Bridges conferences

7. The ‘politics’ of emotion, affect and the sensory in research and practice
By Dr Karen Wright

Workshop Summary:

This workshop focuses on using art and images in research. Informed by the politics of emotion, affect and the sensory, research that critically examines structural power and mainstream knowledges to unearth forms of resistance, new knowledge and ways of being explored. Discussion of research methodology incorporating reflexivity, critical feminist enquiry and ethnography, reflexive field notes and creative participant contribution elements is offered. Implications for practice are presented, applicable across psychotherapeutics. 

Proposed Exercise:

Workshop participants are asked to respond to the images and stories of the research participants that worked with Karen as well as her research stories through words or images, photographs etc. on a shared padlet.

Workshop participants are asked to consider how do they feel about the research, what are their thoughts, what are the affect of the stories of the research upon the workshop participants, what knowledges can inform the workshop participant’s research and what has been created together. 

Biography:

Karen is an integrative psychotherapist and arts psychotherapist registered with BAAT and HCPC. Karen holds a PhD from Goldsmiths University and completed her MA from the University of Hertfordshire. Karen has also completed training in DBT.  Karen has many years’ experience in private practice as well as within the NHS. She is an approved BAAT, accredited private practitioner and supervisor having set up and established her private psychotherapy practice over 20 years ago. Karen works as a Senior Lecturer in the Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy Doctorate (DCPsych) at the Metanoia Institute and as a Course Leader and Senior Lecturer at Regent’s University London. 

In Karen’s previous work within the NHS in a Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service as a senior clinician, she provided specialist psychotherapy, integrative, DBT and specialised art psychotherapy.

During her time working in the NHS, Karen developed and taught interventions and programmes of care such as, art psychotherapy with DBT, a condensed model of DBT and a social justice orientated psychotherapy which gave good patient outcomes.  Karen has expertise in qualitative research. Her recent research centres on the service user’s voice in psychotherapy; interviewing them about their experience, enabling them to have a say in the design of future therapy. 

8. A collaborative arts-informed narrative inquiry into the stories of senior psychotherapy practitioners as they contemplate retirement
By Dr Steven Wells

Workshop Summary:

This workshop emerged from the experience of undertaking the arts-informed narrative inquiry I conducted for my doctoral project ‘My Work Here is Done?’ This project explored therapists’ experiences as they considered retirement. Adopting a traditional approach to data gathering might have included conducting individual interviews with each participant, with the others being unaware of the contributions of their fellow participants.

My project adopted a different model using an approach and methods that supported collaboration between the participants. Using a ‘live’ electronic bulletin board, participants shared their contributions, which included creative writing, poems, and created images. In addition, the participants could comment on the contributions of others. This created potential to fully explore all aspects, and richness, of the narratives and stories participants shared and how they can be better understood and represented. This co-created, collaborative flow of shared understanding and interaction enriched the whole research process and contributed to the emergence of knowledge and deepened the levels of understanding. As one participant stated: “the live bulletin board was a stroke of genius…..I was so moved by other people’s accounts”.

Proposed Exercise:

This workshop offers a unique opportunity to explore a collaborative, arts-informed approach to research that goes beyond traditional methods. Participants can experience how creative contributions like writing, poetry, and images, combined with interaction and feedback from others, can enrich understanding and generate deeper insights. It will re-create an aspect of the approach adopted in the DPsych research. There will be a number of options to explore a given theme - either to respond to some existing material or, alternatively, to produce something yourself from a given prompt. The focus will be on the experience of participating, with an openness to discovering what might emerge through the collaborative process and will be particularly appealing for those interested in innovative research methods, creative expression, or collaborative learning.

Biography:

Dr Steven Wells is a BACP Senior accredited and General Psychotherapy Council registered psychotherapist. He currently works as a therapist, clinical supervisor and trainer.  In addition to over 20 years experience of therapy work, he has considerable experience of training adults in a variety of settings, including training therapists. In addition to therapy work, he is a practicing artist and is keen to explore how an arts-informed approach can inform the research process to discover and engage with aspects of experiencing that would be impossible to capture by using other methods.   

Strand C: Quantitative and Mixed Methods Research

9. Quantitative Methods: It’s Not Maths — It’s Decision-Making
By Dr Hannah Friend

Workshop Summary:

Dr Friend introduces quantitative research as a structured way of thinking rather than a mathematical exercise. The workshop demystifies what quantitative methods entail and what they can and cannot tell us, explores how psychologists move from practice-based or research questions to measurable outcomes, and clarifies key distinctions such as correlation versus cause and effect. Participants are supported to understand how statistical approaches are selected through structured decision-making and how results, including p-values, are interpreted meaningfully in psychological research and practice. 

Proposed Exercise:

Participants work through a series of hypothetical psychological research scenarios, applying a structured decision-making framework to identify the nature of the research question, the type of data generated, and the most appropriate analytical approach. The exercise focuses on developing clear reasoning about assessment and analysis choices, rather than engaging with statistical content or calculations. 

Biography:

Dr Hannah Friend is a Chartered and Registered Forensic Psychologist with extensive experience across mental health, forensic, academic and expert-witness contexts. She has designed postgraduate psychology programmes for validation and accreditation through the British Psychological Society accreditation process and has taught research methods at postgraduate level. Dr Friend has supervised research and conducted doctoral research using advanced quantitative methodologies. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a member of the Editorial Board of Forensic Update.  

10. The Benefits of Mixed Methods Research and The Creative Use of Online Surveys
By Dr Sofie Bager-Charleson and Karen Dempsey.

Workshop Summary:

Proposed Exercise:

Group members will be invited to produce a combination of closed, open and story-completion (creative writing) questions.

Biographies:

• Dr Sofie Bager-Charleson – Dr Sofie Bager-Charleson is a UKCP and BACP registered Psychotherapist, working as Senior Fellow (SFHEA) and Senior Lecturer at the Metanoia Institute. Sofie coordinates training for research supervisors, chairs the research group Therapists as Research-informed Practitioners (TRP) and co-founded the Metanoia Research Academy in 2017. She has published widely in the field of reflexivity, research methodology and training, including nine textbooks - with Supporting Research (2022), Enjoying Research in counselling and psychotherapy (Palgrave 2020) and Practice-based Research in Therapy: A Reflexive Approach (Sage, 2014).  

• Karen Dempsey is a UKCP-registered psychotherapist and clinical supervisor, and an academic lecturer at the Metanoia Institute. As part of her professional doctorate in psychotherapy with the Metanoia Institute/Middlesex University she completed a mixed methods study into storytelling as a teaching technique – titled How storytelling impacts students in their psychotherapy training – using a qualitative-driven online survey of therapists and tutors. Karen also took a creative route for the final part of her doctorate. Her study was a narrative thematic inquiry into journeys of transformation in psychotherapy education, using poetic representation (Richardson, 2011) to evoke the essence of her participants’ voices and stories.  

11. Bringing Science to Life: Creative Tools in a Clinical Trial with Children with Cancer" Using narrative, puppetry, and guided imagery in a psychoneuroimmunology-based intervention

By Dr Margarita Chacín

Workshop Summary:

Biography:

Dr Margarita Chacín is a Chartered Clinical and Health Psychologist (HCPC, UK) and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society (AFBPsS). She graduated in Psychology from the Universidad Rafael Urdaneta (Venezuela), completed a Master’s in Clinical and Health Psychology at the Instituto Superior de Estudios Psicológicos (Spain), and earned a Doctorate in Psychotherapy from the Metanoia Institute/Middlesex University (UK). 
With more than 18 years of clinical experience, she has worked in hospitals, universities, and private practice across Latin America and Europe. 

She founded Horley Psychology (UK) and co-founded Organización Metas (Venezuela). 
Margarita is Senior Lecturer on the Doctorate in Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy at the Metanoia Institute in London. She has led clinical and research projects in psychoneuroimmunology, chronic pain, fatherhood, cancer care, and palliative psychology. 
Her publications include scientific articles, book chapters, and the co-authored book Psychological Ductility: Beyond Resilience – The DART Method. 
Her clinical approach integrates Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), compassion-based therapy, existential thinking, and relational perspectives. 
She is passionate about exploring creativity and transformation in the face of adversity 

12. Making Emotions Count: Exploring the Value of Quantitative Research in Psychology
By Dr Giovanna Bucci

Workshop Summary:

Proposed Exercise:

Biography:

Giovanna (Gio) Bucci is a BPS Chartered and HCPC-registered Counselling Psychologist, and a UKCP-registered Integrative Psychotherapist. She balances her clinical work with an academic post as Senior Lecturer in the Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy Doctorate (DCPsych) at the Metanoia Institute, where she teaches Research 1 and 2. She holds a PhD in Molecular Medicine (Neuroscience) from the University of Siena and the National Council of Research in Italy, as well as a Master in Psychology (MSc Psych) from Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a Doctorate in Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy from Metanoia Institute, London. Her research bridges quantitative neuroscience studies on the mechanisms of mental disorders with both quantitative and qualitative research in the field of psychology.