Dusana Dorjee

I am a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Psychology in Education leading the Well Minds Lab. I combine my expertise in clinical psychology and cognitive neuroscience in my developmental translational neuroscience research on mental health and wellbeing. I investigate psychological and neural processes underpinning mental health and wellbeing and work on ‘translating’ new understanding of these processes into interventions, school curricula and policy. 

I have authored and co-authored over 30 peer-reviewed articles and wrote three peer-reviewed books. My latest book  - Making Sense of Mental Health and Wellbeing in Primary Schools: A Practical, Neuroscience-Based Guide – specifies key capacities underpinning mental health and wellbeing and presents a trauma-informed 7-Step approach to fostering these capacities systematically and gradually across primary school years.

I gained my PhD in Psychology and Cognitive Science (Cognitive Neural Systems) from the University of Arizona and have two master’s degrees, one in clinical psychology (Comenius University, Slovakia) and the other in cognitive psychology and cognitive science (University of Arizona). I also studied philosophy of mind and philosophy of science at doctorate level. I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bristol and Bangor University.

My research programme investigates cognitive, affective and neural mechanisms underpinning mental health and wellbeing (MHW) from a developmental perspective, and translates this research into interventions, school curricula and policy. Specifically, research in the Well Minds Lab I am heading focuses on three main themes. The first theme investigates capacities – neuro-cognitive-affective processes – underpinning MHW and ways these can be fostered in schools. I have formulated a new developmental framework - called the Neurodevelopmental Theory of Mental Health and Wellbeing Capacities (NDeTeC) - that specifies these processes in terms of two key capacities: the self-regulation capacity (as a source of effective attention and emotion regulation) and the self-world capacity (as a source of flexible, ethically-grounded and purposeful self-concept). The second research theme examines changes in these capacities as a result of various contemplative practices, mostly those cultivating mindfulness and compassion, and the impact of these changes on MHW, particularly in the school context. The third research theme builds on the first two themes and explores possible protective effects of the MHW capacities and contemplative practices in mitigating negative impacts of the current global crises on MHW.