History

Our work builds on the Sheffield Psychotherapy Research Programme led by David A. Shapiro in the 1980s and 1990s and continued by Michael Barkham, Gillian Hardy and colleagues, who have developed and extended this line of work since the turn of the millennium.

Historically, our lab members have been affiliated to Sheffield-based research groups including the MRC Social and Applied Psychology Unit (SAPU) and the Centre for Psychological Services Research (CPSR).

Our team supports evidence-based psychological therapies, and people in the team have longstanding affiliations to key societies and professional bodies:

• The international Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR)

• The British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP)

• The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP)

In 2018, we established PEARLS as a continuation of this Sheffield-based research tradition, to mark the arrival of new academics and affiliated international researchers into our lab.