Nancy Kelly

Nancy is an applied social psychologist with a career spanning 30 years as an academic. Nancy has worked at two HEIs in Departments of Psychology, and joined Social Work, Education and Community Wellbeing at Northumbria in 2018. Nancy has been Head of Department of Psychology at previous Universities, Head of Subject for Social Work at Northumbria and is currently strategic lead for Children and Young Peoples Mental Health programmes. Nancy has a track record of engaging with groups and organisations in order to better understand judgement and decision making, peoples lived experience of phenomena and implications for social policy and practice. Nancy is commited to multidisciplinary research, with a specialism in qualitative methodology and analysis, in particular using narrative approaches.

Nancy's research interests lie in the application of psychological theory to understanding a variety of aspects of individual lived experiences of social policy initiatives including areas of drug misuse, community development, and safeguarding children in the light of changing legislation. Generally Nancy's work is concerned with exploring and understanding judgement and decision making in social work from the level of individual and group practitioner decisions and outcomes for children and familes, through to understanding changes in social policy and legislation, and decision making by the judiciary.