Meet our Academic Advisory Team!
We are delighted to have an expert team of academic advisors onboard our U-Belong project. They support our work by overseeing our research activities and offering their knowledge and advice.
Fred Cooper, Research Fellow, University of Exeter
Fred Cooper is a historian of medicine, presently a research fellow at the University of Exeter's Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. His primary research interests are in loneliness and shame, and a major strand of his work is on student loneliness as a historical and contemporary problem, including during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Liv Grosvenor, Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy Project Manager, King’s College London
Liv is the Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy Project Manager at King’s College London. She lead on our institutional application to the Student Minds University Mental Health Charter Award, having developed our self-assessment, managed our on-site assessment visit and leading the action plan succeeding our award outcome. She works with colleagues to develop their understanding of a whole-university approach to student mental health and wellbeing and support projects that help us to better understand students’ experience of this, including our annual King’s Student Wellbeing Survey and King’s 100 student co-creation panel.
Rebecca Shade, Senior Policy & Projects Adviser, University of Edinburgh
Rebecca has worked for the University of Edinburgh for 17 years in various student-facing roles. She now works within the Deputy Secretary Students office, advising and creating policy and projects around student experience, mental health and wellbeing. Rebecca is currently co-chairing a Sense of Belonging project at Edinburgh with Deputy Vice-Principal Students, Professor Tina Harrison.
Julia Pointon-Haas, Head of Advice & Wellbeing, King’s College London
Julia is a PhD Candidate and Higher Education professional with 12 years of experience in university health promotion, peer support and student wellbeing in the USA and UK. At King’s College London Students’ Union (KCLSU), she founded and manages a sector-leading student-led wellbeing service as the Head of Advice & Wellbeing. The service focuses on embedding positive wellbeing in student communities through health promotion activities and peer support. Her PhD research builds on this work to explore university peer support as an intervention to improve university student mental health in partnership with the UK’s student mental health charity, Student Minds.