Brennan Delattre

I am a final year doctoral candidate supervised by Professors Catherine Harmer, Susie Murphy and Joshua Buckman, and funded jointly by The Rachel Conrad Doctoral Fellowship for Treatment Efficacy in Depression, The Clarendon Fund, and a Medical Sciences Graduate School Studentship. My research interests mainly sit at the intersection of social psychology and intervention science. I am presently investigating the potential benefits of cooperative, social movement-based activities (such as salsa dancing and capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian movement art) for individuals with depression, loneliness, and related mental health difficulties. We hope to translate this research to various applications within the NHS mental healthcare systems. 

Prior to beginning work within the Department of Psychiatry, I completed my MSc in Oxford's Experimental Psychology Department under the supervision of Professor Brian Parkinson and Dr. Danielle Shore, where I investigated the role of socio-affective and cognitive support strategies as an initial step to decreasing the cumulative emotional burden of prolonged support provision for those who provide support professionally, such as mental healthcare providers and peer supporters. For my undergraduate studies, I graduated summa cum laude from Middlebury College with a degree in Neuroscience; subsequently worked as a lab manager between the labs of Dr. Brooks King-Casas, Dr. Pearl Chiu, and Dr. Stephen LaConte at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion; and conducted Fulbright research in Niterói and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 

I have also coached the University of Oxford's salsa dance performance team and have taught Latin dance classes via the Oxford University Salsa Society. For more information and a demonstration of my research, see this Selma Jeanne Cohen Keynote at the Fulbright Annual Conference, 2024.