Claire graduated with a BSc (Hons) degree in Human Psychology from Aston University in 1996 and a PhD from Keele University in 2002. She re-joined the School of Psychology at Keele University in September 2004 as a Teaching Fellow and Learning Support Tutor, became a lecturer in September 2005, a Senior Lecturer in 2011, and a Professor in 2018. Her PhD, supervised by Prof Mike Boulton, focused on the links between children’s social skills and peer victimisation. This included developing, running, and evaluating a Social Skills Training Programme for children bullied by their peers. Following her PhD, Claire worked as a Research Associate in the School of Social Relations on a project to evaluate the work of the NSPCC Schools Teams (2001-2003), and for one year was a member of the research team based at the University of Birmingham responsible for the National Evaluation of the Children’s Fund. In the REF 2014, her work with the NSPCC was selected as an impact case study, subsequently rated as 4*. The research had a major impact on the Welsh Assembly rolling out counselling in schools in Wales.

Claire worked at Manchester Metropolitan University from 2019-2024 as a Reader in Educational Psychology and taught on the new BSc in Educational Psychology. She was an active member of the Education and Social Research Institute with responsibilities for research ethics and research mentoring. From 2022-2024, Claire was Head of Research Ethics and Governance for the Faculty of Health and Education. She joined the School of Education in August 2024 as Professor of Psychology of Education to teach on the BSc Psychology in Education and MSc Psychology of Education programmes.

As an applied Social/Developmental Psychologist, Claire is particularly interested in children’s social and emotional wellbeing within educational settings and draws on a range of quantitative and qualitative research methods to understand these real-world issues. She has an established national and international reputation in the fields of school bullying, teenage relationship abuse, and children’s humour, and a growing reputation in the area of LGBTQIA+ inclusion within education.

Claire is most well-known for her research on school bullying which started with her undergraduate dissertation and then her PhD in 1998. The ESRC-funded ‘Humour Styles and Bullying in Schools’ Project that Claire led as PI from 2011-2012 at Keele University led to 5 publications in high impact journals and also to media interest, with a BBC website piece being the most read story of the day. Her research on children’s humour began in 2009 through the development of a Humor Styles Questionnaire for Children (the Child-HSQ). This has enabled researchers to study the development of humour through childhood and adolescence.

Building on her expertise in the area of school bullying, Claire turned her attention to the issue of teenage relationship abuse. The ESRC-funded ‘Boys to Men’ research project (2010-2013) which she co-led at Keele University led to 8 articles and the book, ‘Young Men and Domestic Abuse’. The project also stimulated a high level of media attention with interviews for Women’s Hour (BBC Radio 4), and a TV interview on BBC West Midlands Today. For further details see www.boystomenproject.com. At the same time as the ‘Boys to Men’ Project, Claire and her colleagues embarked on a collaboration with partners across Europe working on the same issue (the REaDAPt project). For both projects, she led the research strands around domestic abuse prevention education. She also led on the development of a new measure – the Attitudes towards Domestic Violence questionnaire, which has enabled other researchers to assess the impact of healthy relationships education.

During lockdown in 2020, Claire co-led a research project with Dr Charlotte Bagnall, that examined parents’, children’s and teachers’ perceptions and experiences of primary to secondary school transition under Covid-19, which resulted in a piece in the Conversation that was picked up by The Independent, helping to inform transition support for 2021.

More recently, Claire was PI on the ‘Queering the Form project’ at Manchester Metropolitan University. In this project, LGBTQ+ students from across MMU worked as co-researchers in a series of zine-making workshops at the Manchester Poetry Library to explore the use of zines as a space for navigating LGBTQ+ life and identities. This inter-disciplinary participatory research project involves a collaboration with the Poetry Library, and the School of Art. Claire has presented the findings at national conferences with some of the students and the final dissemination event at the Manchester Poetry library was very well received. It is hoped that the findings will lead to initiatives to create more positive experiences for LGBTQ+ students in HE. A paper with the students as co-authors will be published in the Psychology of Education Review.

Claire has collaborated with a range of external organisations including: West Midlands (WM) Police; The West Midlands Violence Reduction Partnership; New Vic Borderlines; Equation; Arch (now ‘GLOW’); and The Proud Trust.

Current projects include a BA-funded project, ‘Teaching Shakespeare’s violence in secondary schools: Beyond the content warning’ with Dr Rebecca Yearling at Keele University, A YEF-funded project, ‘Using a creative writing intervention (New Chapters) to improve behavioural difficulties for young people in prison: A randomised control trial’, led by Dr Charlotte Lennox at the University of Manchester, and an ESRC White Rose DTP 1+3 Collaborative PhD Studentship with The Proud Trust and Eleanor Grace, ‘Bullying of LGBT+ pupils: School contextual risk and protective factors’.