Talya Greene

Talking trauma, treatment and teatime with Dr Talya Greene, Associate Professor at University College London.

What do you currently do?

I have just moved back to the UK and joined the Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology at UCL in London as an Associate Professor. Before that I was an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Mental Health at the University of Haifa in Israel.

How would you explain that in ten words or fewer?

Examine daily life symptoms and experiences to improve trauma treatment.

Tell us about a typical working day.

Every day is different, but my working day usually includes some combination of writing up research, meeting with a student or a collaborator to discuss their work, conducting statistical analyses, trying to keep up my reading of recent publications, and inviting people to review papers for the European Journal of Psychotraumatology. I love how varied my work tasks are.

How and why did you end up working in trauma?

I grew up as a grandchild of Jewish refugees who lost the majority of their relatives in the Holocaust. I was always very struck by how the trajectory of an individual’s life can be so dramatically affected by the experiences they go through. I wanted to better understand the impact of trauma and what can be done to support those who go through it.

What are you currently working on?

My work mostly focuses on the impact of mass trauma events.

One strand of my research using ecological momentary assessment methods to examine whether identifying networks of the dynamic interactions between daily life symptoms, thoughts and emotions can help us to better understand how trauma affects individuals in their daily lives, as well as investigating whether we can improve and potentially personalise treatment based on these networks.

Another current strand of research examines occupational trauma and moral injury in different professional groups and their family members. For example, in health and social care workers in the UK and in Israel.

Where can we find your most recent publication or work?

What excites you most about the field of traumatology?

I am very excited about the potential that intensive longitudinal data collection methods have to push the needle forward in terms of developing novel treatment approaches.

Outside work, what’s your secret passion?

I love reading novels. I’m enjoying the fact that my new commute gives me more time to read.

What are you currently reading?

Take My Hand, by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Who, or whose work, do you particularly admire?

I really admire a lot of the recent research coming out of the Netherlands and Belgium in understanding mental health through a complex systems lens. I’m especially grateful to researchers who have developed new statistical approaches and have shared these methods in an open and collaborative way, such as Denny Borsboom, Ellen Hamaker, Laura Bringmann, Eiko Fried, and Sacha Epskamp, among others.

If you didn’t do what you do, what would you have done?

In another life I would have trained as a medical doctor.

Where would we typically find you at 3pm on a Saturday?

Family tea! Together with my children, husband, parents, siblings, and the rapidly growing group of nieces and nephews.

Where would you rather be right now?

Somewhere warm by the sea! I’m still readjusting to the British weather.

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