Affiliation: Mental Health Research and Treatment Center, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, DE
Keywords: Psychosis, Schizophrenia, Digital interventions, Auditory hallucinations, Avatar therapy, Youth mental health
Full profile:
Mar Rus-Calafell completed her studies in psychology at the University of the Balearic Islands (Spain). She then moved to the University of Barcelona to continue with her MSc degree in Clinical Psychology. In Barcelona, she also trained as a clinical psychologist and completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology (Cum Laude and Best Thesis Award). She complemented her PhD studies with a scholarship from the League of European Research Universities (LERU), to attend the distinguished training on Development of Leadership Skills from Employment in Enterprise, Government and Academia at the Sorbonne University (Paris).
She then started as a post-doc and clinical psychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), King’s College London (UK), where she coordinated a large clinical trial to test the efficacy of AVATAR therapy (a novel digital intervention for auditory hallucinations in psychosis). In 2016, she was awarded the National Institute Health Research Independent Researcher Award. In 2017, she started working as a clinical psychologist and research fellow with the Oxford-Cognitive Approaches to Psychosis (O-CAP) team, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford. In 2020, she was awarded the prestigious Sofja Kovalevskaja Award (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and Ministry of Education and Research, Germany) and she became the independent research group leader of the Young VOices Research and Interventions (YVORI) research group, which is based at the Mental Health Research and Treatment Center (MHRTC, Ruhr-Universität Bochum).
Her research focus through her clinical and research career is the understanding and treatment of mental health disorders, and psychosis specifically, and the application of digital technologies to improve assessment and treatment of these disorders. She is a lecturer at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum and invited lecturer at other European universities, has been part of tribunals for PhD ceremonies and is a reviewer of more than 20 journals and science organisations.