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This research expertise led to a collaboration between the School of Psychology and the Recovery and Reorganisation group at Grant Thornton LLP which specialised in negotiating Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs) between people with problem debts and their creditors.

Initially funded by Grant Thornton and the Business Alliance Office at QUB, the collaboration moved from focussing on emotions such as shame and regret experienced by people in IVAs, to investigating the difficulties associated with advising people with problem debts about their decision options, and how best to ensure that people decide to adhere to the advice they receive. Our work helped to improve rates of debt advice adherence amongst potential clients. The research revealed barriers to advice adherence when these initial meetings took place by telephone. These insights informed training we provided to Aperture’s debt advisors about strategies for handling difficult advice conversations.

A series of seminars to present the research resulted in an increased number of referrals to Aperture services from voluntary and government sector debt advice organisations.

Another outcome from this work with the company was to raise awareness of the mental health problems experienced by its clients. Our client surveys repeatedly showed that, compared to general population data, client scores on a number of measures suggested that they suffered from poor mental health. As a consequence, all staff with a client-facing role received training in suicide awareness and all Aperture IVA clients had 24 hour telephone access to a counsellor.

The project has worked with three different groups of artists to produce a set of performances entitled About Time. The groups are Bbeyond (performance art), Echo Echo Dance Theatre Company and Big Telly Theatre Company. The project team has also worked with the cartoonist Brian John Spencer to produce a leaflet to help audiences visually explore different ways of conceptualizing time. The leaflet was launched at W5, an interactive science discovery centre in Belfast.

• Cristina Atance, University of Ottowa
• Eugene Caruso, University of Chicago
• Marc Buehner, University of Cardiff
• David Lagnado, University College London
• Christoph Hoerl, University of Warwick
• Professor Yulia Kovas, Goldsmiths
• Professor Sergey Malykh, Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education
• Professor Peter Clough, University of Huddersfield
• Dr. Tim J. Smith, Birkbeck College
• Aimee Bright, Queen Mary University of London
• David Over, University of Durham
• Jean-Francois Bonnefon, CNRS Toulouse
• Evan Heit, University of California, Merced
• John Coley, Northeastern University

Our PhD Students