I can’t recommend a placement enough, I learned so much about mental health conditions in an academic sense but also so much about the reality of peoples’ experiences and support services available.

I was trained in Psychometric testing, shadowed therapy sessions and got to lead research projects which helped me realise where I wanted my career to go. It absolutely gave me the skills and experiences I needed to get a graduate research role.

Since I graduated, I have worked for the Civil Service as a ‘Government Social Researcher’. In that type of Government role you apply for a profession, rather than a particular post so you don’t know the exact area you’ll work in. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to work in, so I thought it was a really good option to get experience of different types of research. I’ve been involved in a really wide range of projects, from designing interventions to increase survey response to developing and testing questions for the 2021 Census.

One of the things I really loved was being able to develop and test new research methods, for example virtual cognitive interviews, which proved incredibly useful during the COVID pandemic.

I recently moved to NHS Test and Trace, as the Lead for COVID-Related Research Studies. This has been a great opportunity for me to move into a health-related role, which had been my aim when I graduated. It’s been a fantastic experience to work in a different setting and it’s obviously very fast paced, which demands a really different research approach.

I am working on a number of COVID-related studies, including the leading study of COVID reinfections, which was picked up by news stations around the world and made the front page of UK newspapers.