Karen Mansfield

I am a visiting academic in the Department of Psychiatry, alongside work as a technical expert for European Commission projects, and previously a postdoctoral researcher in the departments of Experimental Psychology, Psychiatry, and the Oxford Internet Institute.

Currently I supervise research students in the Oxford departments of Psychiatry and Experimental Psychology, on projects investigating how social media, physical activity and time-use in general, impact the emotional and cognitive health of children and young people. I also give guest lectures in social science, including the Oxford Prospects Programmes.

CURRENT RESEARCH

My main interests are in the impacts of digital technology use and its interaction with social determinants on the health and wellbeing of young people and other vulnerable populations, with an aim to promote mental health and agency in an inclusive, equitable way. I take a metascientific approach, addressing challenges to causal inference and translation to policy and practice, using mixed methods. This includes systematic reviews, surveys, analyses of cohort data, and school-based interventions, ensuring co-production with young people, policymakers, regulators, practitioners, and industry stakeholders. Key considerations for promoting scientific integrity include sample diversity, inclusion, heterogeneity and representativeness; minimising bias in research design, measurement and reporting; study transparency and reproducibility; data security, confidentiality and other ethical considerations. 

PREVIOUS PROJECTS

From 2023-2025 I was based at the Oxford Internet Institute, working on a project on Adolescent Well-being in the Digital Age. From 2022-2023, I worked with the MYRIAD team, analysing and disseminating findings from a randomised controlled trial of a school based mindfulness intervention. From 2018-2022, I was a research fellow with the Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre, carrying out translational research, including co-development of the OxWell Student Survey and the EMOTIVE (digital phenotyping) project. My previous research (Department of Experimental Psychology, 2014-2018) and PhD project (Tilburg University, The Netherlands) focused on the neural mechanisms of cognitive control, adaptive learning, engagement and motivation. My research methods included electrophysiological data (ERPs and spectral analysis), intelligence testing, cognitive training and non-invasive electrical stimulation (tES).