About the Aim-For team

Andrea is a BPS chartered and HCPC registered psychologist. She specialises in Heart Rate Variability and bio feedback training, performance enhancement in the areas of coaching psychology, performance psychology and sport and exercise psychology; working with athletes from elite to amateur level, performing artists (performance anxiety), students (examination anxiety), and SMEs who need to improve team performance.

Ross is the research Director on the Doctorate of Clinical Psychology training programme at the University of Liverpool. He leads the 'Mental Health in Context' research group at the Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, University of Liverpool. Ross has a keen research interest in Global Mental Health and was lead editor of ‘The Palgrave Handbook of Socio-cultural Perspectives on Global Mental Health.

Graham's research areas encapsulate clinical psychophysiology, cognitive processing in anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, early interventions for PTSD, psychotherapy evaluation and single case methods, workforce planning models, and diversity issues within applied psychology education and training.

David was a promising footballer and represented Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest as an academy/centre of excellence player (across the age groups). He also played football for my school, district, county and university.

Martin's main expertise is within the scientific understanding of human performance and wellbeing under pressure and adversity, and the application of psychology within achievement settings.

My work centres on the psychophysiology of stress, emotion management using cognitive-behavioural approaches (rational emotive behaviour therapy; REBT), and the transference of research to practice through consultancy. These three main areas of focus inform my teaching at all levels, my collaboration with external partners, and my engagement with the wider public and academic community.

James is a BPS Chartered Sport and Exercise Psychologist and is currently carrying out a PhD looking into parental engagement within elite academy football.

James has worked with both international and amateur athletes across a wide range of sports including football, netball, rugby, and hockey. He has over 6 years experience as a Sport

Psychologist within elite academy football, and has worked alongside the highest level of coaches and sport science staff in the industry. He currently works for a Premier League category 1 academy alongside completion of his PhD.

Based in Indianna in the USA, Dr. Lindsey Blom, CMPC, AASP Fellow, Ball State University (BSU) Professor of Sport & Exercise Psychology, Faculty Athletics Representative, and Graduate Program Coordinator is a leading science-practice scholar whose work focuses on using sport for social change with an emphasis on positive youth development and using sport to promote peace at the individual, community, and international levels. As an invited roundtable expert, she has advised the Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation and Hedayah on using sport to counter violent extremism and serves on the BOD for Dream Sports Africa and BSU’s Center for Peace and Conflict Studies. In her career, she has secured nearly a million dollars in externally funding, with a recent project involving exploring peace indicators of Liberian youth in a sport for development program, implementing sport for social change programs in India, Jordan, and Tajikistan, developing a values-based curriculum for recreational sport leagues, and investigating local afterschool sport for peace programs.

Ricardo Lugo is a psychologist based in Norway with international experience as an applied practitioner, university lecturer, and researcher. He has consulting experience in Norway, Canada, Czech Republic, Italy, USA and the UK within elite sports, education, and health. Ric works with individuals and teams from a number of sports including football, golf, skiing, equestrian, basketball and luge and bobsleigh, and at all levels of ability from recreational to elite performer. He collaborates with military organizations as well as professional and amateur sport clubs and professional. Ric also has expertise in experimentation and applied education interventions focused within Human Factors and Cognitive Engineering in cyber domains, where he researched on the interaction of individual aspects of human behaviour (micro cognition) incorporating concepts such as self-efficacy, resilience, metacognition, and naturalistic environments (macro cognition) and has published research in number of scientific journals. Ric also incorporates performance predictors such as time-pressure, risk, ambiguity, and intuitive decision-making. He has also developed applied education interventions that focus on accelerated learning both in sports and in military contexts. Ric’s expertise in predictors of performance under pressure, in high-stake situations and in mental preparation in addition to experimental psychology, have contributed as evidence-based scientific techniques to the development of assessment, research and educational designs.