The Department of Psychiatry has sustained strong research momentum over the past year, with major funding successes, significant philanthropic investment, influential research outputs, and contributions to national policy and infrastructure that support improvements in mental health.
Research activity across the Department remains extensive and internationally impactful. Over the year, Departmental researchers produced 549 peer-reviewed publications, reflecting the breadth of work spanning basic science, clinical research and population mental health. Complementing these outputs, the Research Support team supported 346 funding applications, and 52 new funding awards commenced, enabling a wide range of innovative research programmes to progress – and hopefully ensuring our ongoing productivity in the coming years.
In partnership with Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and Aston University, the University of Oxford was selected to host a £16.3 million NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) to support infrastructure that will improve people’s health. Other major new awards include two large Wellcome-funded projects focused on advancing target validation for novel mental health drug discovery, and on applying neuroscience to improve understanding of symptoms in anxiety, depression and psychosis (in collaboration with UCL). As a final example, during the last month, researchers in the Department were awarded prestigious Wellcome Accelerator and Mental Health Platform Fellowship awards, recognising leadership in collaborative research designed to accelerate discovery and translation in mental health.
The Department has benefited from generous philanthropic support this year. Significant gifts from the Bukhman Foundation are supporting research focused on child and adolescent psychiatry and mindfulness. A transformative £27 million gift has also funded the establishment of the Oxford Centre for Emerging Minds Research, dedicated to advancing understanding of mental health challenges in young people.
We were delighted to see Armin Raznahan appointed to the W.A. Handley Chair in the Department of Psychiatry, recognising his outstanding contributions to developmental neuroscience and psychiatric research.
Supporting the next generation of researchers remains a priority. The Broadening Horizons travel grant scheme has continued to enable doctoral students, early career researchers, and others who face barriers to funding, to attend conferences. We made £15k of awards to 21 researchers.
The inaugural Award in memory of Dr Valeria Frighi was presented to psychology trainee Michael Barry, recognising excellence in intellectual disabilities research.
Leading academics from the Department were recognised on the 2025 Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers list, highlighting the global reach and influence of their work. Our researchers also contributed to an update of the NICE Real-World Evidence Framework, helping to shape the use of real-world data in health and care guidance.
We thank everyone - researchers, students, and support staff - for their contributions to another highly successful year for the Department.