Lara Ayala Nunes

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychiatry. My current research focuses on the implementation aspects of an evidence-based, innovative, personalized digital mental health intervention aimed at enhancing the mental well-being of young people.

As part of the ECoWeB Project, I am using implementation frameworks to inform the evaluation and sustainability of MyMoodCoach, an emotional competence enhancing app. This smartphone self-help intervention aims at promoting well-being and preventing mental health problems via addressing deficits in three major components of emotional competence: production, regulation and knowledge and selectively improving emotional competence skills.

Using qualitative methods, we are interviewing young people participating in the trial to better understand the barriers and facilitators to the adoption, usage, and sustainability of the app. To make this app as universal and inclusive as possible, a further sub-study in which the views of vulnerable, underserved young people are fed back to the refinement of the app is also underway.

Before joining the University of Oxford, I worked as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Warwick. I completed a PhD in Developmental Processes and Family Interventions at the University of Seville (2017), which focused on child well-being and parenting in at-risk contexts during the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008. I hold an MSc in Clinical and Health Psychology (2012) and a BSc in Psychology from the University of Algarve (2009). 

My research interests are family dynamics and parenting processes in disadvantaged environments, as well as the determinants of child well-being in those contexts. More specifically, I am interested in finding out how broader societal factors, such as social policy and the economy, affect the lives of families and children. I am also keen in evaluating interventions that aim to improve the parenting practices and adjustment of individuals facing significant adversities. In short, my overarching concern is how we, as psychology researchers, can improve the life chances of children who grow up in deprived contexts.