Two researchers have been awarded prestigious Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships to carry out research in the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Population Health.
Awarded to Dr Laura Bozicevic, Department of Primary Care and Mental Health and Dr Charlotte Entwistle, who will join the Department of Psychology, the three-year Fellowships fund researchers to undertake a significant piece of research and build towards an academic career.
Professor Claire Eyers, Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Impact, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences said: “These Fellowships are extremely competitive, so to be awarded two is testament to the research excellence and hard work of both Laura and Charlotte, as well as the Institute of Population Health’s commitment to supporting early career researchers.”
Dr Bozicevic’s Fellowship will investigate the effect of socio-cultural factors on school readiness and academic outcomes in pre-schoolers and school-age children from disadvantaged and minority families living in the UK. Reducing educational inequality for children and young people remains a major challenge for UK public policy; this project will build on the Institute’s world-leading research to address fundamental health inequalities and to improve health and wellbeing operating at the community and population level.
Meanwhile, Dr Entwistle’s Fellowship will investigate the relationship between narrative identity (how we tell stories about ourselves) and personality functioning (the interplay of traits, emotions, and behaviours, influencing how individuals interact with others and navigate life). Through this Fellowship, Dr Entwistle plans to revolutionise the study of narrative identity, within the realm of personality functioning and more broadly, using a novel approach that combines traditional narrative analysis approaches with cutting-edge computational linguistic analysis of life stories, which resonates with the Institute’s cross-disciplinarity and expertise in mixed methods research.