Keynote presentations and workshops

Putting a face to appearance research: representation of understudied visible differences

Born with a facial difference, my lived experience sparked my interest in the field of psychology. Yet, I found that visible differences and disabilities were underrepresented and understudied in my chosen field. Over the past 15+ years, my research, teaching, and advocacy work has focused on building understanding and representation of disability in the field. I’ll review my research on rare facial differences including facial paralysis, which layers the stigma of visible difference with disrupted facial expression, creating a uniquely challenging experience. New mixed methods research on the experience of disclosing or explaining facial differences finds disclosure styles that compliment and extend those found in research on concealable stigmatized identities. These findings present larger ramifications for disclosure of any sort of perceived difference. This is a call for appearance research to include nuance from the margins to better understand the breadth and complexity of body image. Finally, I’ll discuss advocacy work to increase representation of people with visible differences and disabilities in psychology and invite the audience to join the cause.

Anti-ableist practices in psychology

Drawing from my insights as a disabled academic psychologist and leader of the Disability Advocacy and Research Network (DARN), this workshop will interrogate and interrupt ableism in psychology research, teaching, and training. Fully representative research must include people with lived experience of visible difference and disability as co-creators. As a key minority identity, disability status must be measured as a demographic factor in our research. We will discuss designing research with participant accessibility and inclusion “baked in.” Academic psychology has a leaky pipeline, with more disabled students entering than who attain and retain faculty positions. We will consider systems and practices contributing to these disparities. Attendees will have the opportunity to work through their own real-world case studies, and we will work toward developing educational materials and interventions that truly interrupt stigma and ableism.

From zero to 100 million people: Using cross-sector partnerships, evidence-based strategies and disruptive innovation to improve body image and smash beauty stereotypes.

For decades, researchers have noted the role of industries in influencing body image and appearance ideals. Yet, many businesses face barriers to finding academic collaborators and applying the latest science to their business practices and community impact work. Meanwhile, brilliant scientists continue to discover new ways to improve body image and tackle appearance-based prejudice. However, most do not have the resource, opportunity, or platform to turn these insights into real-world world impact. And many are sceptical of working with industry.

These challenges are not unique to the field of body image and appearance research. On average, there is a 17-year time lag between scientific discoveries and benefits to people in the real world. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent vaccine developments, however, have shown us that this can happen much quicker when scientists, businesses, community health organisations and governments work together.

Drawing on a 10-year programme of research and advocacy, this presentation will demonstrate how disruptive innovation, task-shifting, and ethical, transparent shared-valued partnerships between academics, industry and civil society can be utilized to improve body image at scale.  It will show how these strategies have been used to create and scale up the delivery of evidence-based body image campaigns and interventions to reach 100 million young people around the world. There will be a particular focus on the “behind the scenes” processes and challenges in this work, so that other researchers and practitioners can benefit from our hard-won lessons and enhance the social impact of their own work.

Tips and insights for working with industry to improve body image and smash appearance stereotypes: Ethical considerations, strategic planning and stakeholder influencing skills 

I’m passionate about creating a world free of restrictive beauty ideals, gender norms, and appearance stereotypes, where no one is held back by appearance concerns, pressures, and unjust systems. I believe that the rapid social change needed to create this world can only happen with genuine, ethical and shared-value partnerships between academics, scientists, industry, governments and civil society. This has led me to break the traditional academic mould and spend the past decade consulting with brands, businesses and organisations across beauty, sport, fashion and social media industries to drive social change with evidence-based insights and advice. All the while maintaining a career in academia!

In this 90-minute interactive workshop, I will draw upon my experience and lessons learned from working with start-ups and world-leading brands and platforms like Dove, Nike, and Instagram to help you consider how you too might want to work with industry to drive social change. I’ll share hard-won insights into how to use strategic planning and stakeholder influencing skills to create industry collaborations and consultancies spanning research, intervention development and implementation, communications campaigns and disruptive business practices. We’ll cover ethical considerations, how to find industry partners, how to pitch your ideas and how to successfully execute industry partnership projects. This is a hands-on workshop covering practical techniques, tips and hints to complement the broader insights shared in my keynote presentation.