Lab Members

Rory C. O’Connor

Past president of the International Association for Suicide Prevention and a past President of International Academy for Suicide Research. Rory has a long-standing interest in suicide research (for more information, see a profile here). He has been conducting research into suicide and self-harm since 1994 and he established the SBRL (originally named SBRG) in 2003.

Twitter: @suicideresearch

Nadia Belkadi

Nadia joined the SBRL as a research assistant in October 2022. Prior to this she worked in crisis, forensic in-patient services and educational settings. Currently, Nadia works on different projects focussed on interventions for individuals who are at risk of suicide. In addition to this, Nadia is involved with an NIHR funded mixed methods study known as the DBI Impact Evaluation on Self-harm and Suicide (DIMES) which is aiming to understand if Distress Brief Intervention (DBI) has helped people who have experiences of self-harm and suicide. Nadia has also recently just started her PhD in SBRL exploring male suicide in the construction industry.

Email address: nadia.belkadi@glasgow.ac.uk

Susanna Bennett

Susie Bennett is a postdoctoral researcher exploring male suicide. Her work focuses on the psychological impact of cultural and social factors on men’s suicidal despair, and how men can be supported to recover a meaningful life. In particular, her research focuses on the dynamics of selfhood, interpersonal connections, childhood, emotional life, masculinity, psychological pain and suicidal behaviours.

Email address: susanna.bennett@glasgow.ac.uk
Instagram: @male_suicide_research

Katie Bryan

Katie joined the SBRL in October 2025 as a full-time PhD student at the University of Glasgow. Originally from a rural area, her research focuses on suicide prevention within agricultural communities. Building on their master’s work examining mental wellbeing, health, and the effectiveness of rural and agricultural support interventions, the project investigates psychological, social, and environmental factors contributing to suicide risk. Using the Integrated Motivational-Volitional model of suicidal behaviour, the research aims to better understand the unique stressors faced by people in agriculture and to inform practical prevention strategies and support initiatives.

Email address: K.bryan.1@research.gla.ac.uk 

Kirsty Clark

Dr. Kirsty A. Clark is trained as a social and psychiatric epidemiologist. She serves as an Assistant Professor of Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Dr. Clark’s program of research focuses on studying risk and protective factors for suicide among LGBTQ+ populations with a focus on stigma processes. She is principal investigator of Project SPIRiT (Suicide Prediction in Real-Time), a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health that collects smartphone-based intensive longitudinal data to study suicidal ideation intensity and its real-time precursors among LGBTQ+ youth. Dr. Clark received a PhD in epidemiology from UCLA in 2019 and completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Yale University in 2021.

Dr. Clark is spending 2024-2025 Academic Year on sabbatical with the Suicidal Behaviour Research Laboratory.

Email address:
kirsty.clark@vanderbilt.edu
kirsty.clark@glasgow.ac.uk
Twitter: @KirstyClarkPhD

Seonaid Cleare

Seonaid is a research fellow and works on a range of projects within the SBRL looking at risk and protective factors for suicide. Her own research focuses on factors which may provide individuals some protection from emotional distress and self-harm and suicide.

Email address: Seonaid.cleare@glasgow.ac.uk
Twitter: @SeonaidCleare

Meggy Croal

Meggy joined the SBRL in 2025 as a full time PhD student at the University of Glasgow after working in psilocybin drug development for mental health conditions. Her PhD is exploring the biological aspects of the stress response in suicide risk, with focus on cortisol, emotion processing and negative life events.

Email address: m.croal.1@research.gla.ac.uk

Mareike Ernst

Mareike Ernst is an assistant professor and psychotherapist in training at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria, where she leads the Interpersonal Processes and Crises Lab. She is a visiting researcher at the SBRL and the Principal Investigator of the projects TempRes (examining temporal dynamics of suicidal ideation and risk and protective factors, building on the IMV model) and TASC (aimed at strengthening suicide prevention in people with cancer). Her main research topics, in connection with suicidality and beyond, are psychotherapy research and loneliness.

Email address: mareike.ernst@aau.at
Twitter: @ernst_mareike

Marianne Etherson

Marianne is a Research Associate at the University of Glasgow. In this role, she is involved in several projects, including the Digital Youth grant project funded by the Medical Research Council. Marianne is also a member of the Academic Advisory Group to the Scottish Government-funded National Suicide Prevention Advisory Group. Prior to her role here, Marianne completed her PhD in 2023 at York St John University which focused on examining the link between perfectionism and mental health outcomes (i.e., depressive symptoms and suicide ideation). Marianne is currently building on this research to better understand the relationship between perfectionism and suicidal ideation.

Email address: Marianne.Etherson@glasgow.ac.uk
Twitter: @M_Etherson

Ailsa Foley

Ailsa joined the SBRL in 2025 as a full time PhD student at the University of Glasgow. She also works within the School of Health and Wellbeing as a lecturer on the global mental health programme. Her PhD is exploring the impact of social inequality on male suicide.

Email address:
Ailsa.Foley@glasgow.ac.uk

Lavenda Geshica

Lavenda is a PhD student in the School of Health and Wellbeing at the University of Glasgow.  Lavenda’s research interest includes investigating the factors contributing to suicidality and the involvement of lived experience in suicide-related research. Lavenda is also researching the dynamics of suicidality and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).

Email address:
l.geshica.1@research.gla.ac.uk

James Glass

James is a PhD student at the University of Glasgow investigating suicide risk within the veterinary profession, with the goal of helping to inform suicide prevention. More specifically, James hopes to use the integrated motivational-volitional model of suicide behaviour to better understand the development of suicidal ideation in veterinary professionals, and what impacts the transition from suicidal thoughts to attempts or death by suicide.

Email address:
J.Glass.1@research.gla.ac.uk
Twitter: @Vet_James

Niamh Gordon

Niamh is a writer and PhD student on the Creative Writing DFA programme at the University of Glasgow, based between Creative Writing and the Suicidal Behaviour Research Lab. Her AHRC-funded PhD project is a creative-critical exploration of how traumatic grief impacts on narrative time, looking specifically at bereavement by suicide. Her research interests include narrative time and how it functions; representations of bereavement by suicide; postvention practices; Scottish writer Ali Smith; and experimental writing.

Email address: n.gordon.2@research.gla.ac.uk
Twitter: @_niamhgordon

Olivia J. Kirtley

Olivia Kirtley is an FWO Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow within the Center for Contextual Psychiatry at KU Leuven in Belgium, where she also leads “SIGMA”, a large-scale longitudinal study of adolescent mental health and development using experience sampling methods (ESM). Her current research uses ESM to investigate dynamic processes involved in ideation-to-action transitions in adolescents who self-harm, specifically social interaction and future thinking. Olivia leads several projects aimed at increasing transparency and reproducibility in the ESM field, including designing a pre-registration template for ESM research and leading the ESM Item Repository.

Email address: olivia.kirtley@kuleuven.be
Twitter: @LivveyKirtley

Gonca Kose

Gonca Kose is a postgraduate researcher within the Suicidal Behaviour Research Laboratory (SBRL). She is currently working on a PhD project investigating the relationship between future thinking (the capacity to mentally project the self into possible future scenarios) and suicide risk. She is a Turkish Government sponsored student who will start her career as an academic at Akdeniz University after completing her PhD.

Email address: 2325158K@student.gla.ac.uk

Krystyna Loney

Krystyna Loney joined the Suicidal Behaviour Research Lab (SBRL) as a Research Assistant in 2022. Her work focuses on intervention and training development of the National Distress Brief Intervention (DBI) Programme. She is also an Academic Advisor to the National Suicide Prevention Advisory Group for Creating Hope Together, Scotland’s National Suicide Prevention Strategy. Krystyna is currently completing a PhD that examines the relationship between coping strategies and suicide risk. 

Email address: krystyna.loney@glasgow.ac.uk

Hazel Marzetti

Hazel (she/her) is a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Edinburgh using critical, creative and qualitative methods to analyse political representations of suicide. Previously she undertook her PhD at the University of Glasgow exploring LGBT+ young people’s suicidal thoughts and attempts in Scotland using a qualitative methodology. Her research interests centre on LGBT+ mental health, the emotions of suicide, and ways of bringing psychological and sociological methods into dialogue with one another to strengthen suicide research.

Email address: Hazel.Marzetti@ed.ac.uk
Twitter: @hazelmarzetti

Heather McClelland

Heather is a lecturer on the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (DClinPsy) programme at the University of Glasgow. Her specialist research interests in suicide prevention include the mechanisms of social connectivity, the impact of loneliness, and the acceptability of digital medical technologies. She is the Principal Investigator of the CASEY Project (Crisis Assistance and Support for Distress and Emergency), which is funded by the Medical Research Council and the Glasgow Knowledge Exchange Fund. Heather is a former senior academic advisor to the Scottish Government’s suicide prevention action plan, Creating Hope Together (2022–2032) and was awarded her PhD in 2022 for research examining the association between social bonds and self-harm.

Email address: Heather.McClelland@glasgow.ac.uk
Twitter: @HeatherMPsych

Jack Melson

Jack is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Health and Wellbeing at the University of Glasgow. His work seeks to enhance understanding of the aetiology and prevention/management of self-harm, suicidal behaviour and emotional distress, and the translation of this knowledge to development and implementation of complex interventions. He also has research interests in substance use and its relationship to self-harm. His current research brings together these interests, with projects that enhance understanding of the role of alcohol-related factors in self-harm and suicidal risk as well as the development, implementation and expansion of a national Distress Brief Intervention (‘DBI’).

Email address: ambrose.melson@glasgow.ac.uk
Twitter: @A_J_Melson

Lena Østergaard

Lena is a trained midwife and has a Master of Science in Public Health degree. Lena is currently conducting a PhD at the Centre for Suicide Research in Odense, Denmark (Supervisor: Prof. Rory O’Connor). In her PhD project “Implementing School-based suicide prevention”, Lena is investigating how to implement a gatekeeper intervention in a school setting for adolescent and young adults with, personal, academic and social problems, and is conducting a feasibility study of a gatekeeper training program in this specific setting. 

Research interest:
– Intervention and implementation science
– Implementation of suicide prevention interventions
– Evaluation of implementation plans and strategies

Email address: Email address: leo@cfsmail.dk