Professor Dame Til Wykes

Dame Til Wykes has a DPhil from Sussex University, Brighton, (UK). She also holds an MPhil from the University of London, and a BSc (Hons) from the University of Nottingham (UK). Her does research on mental health, cognition, psychological treatments and their implementation in health services, especially schizophrenic patients.

Her research involves the inclusion of users of mental health services for research purposes. Til is the founder of the Service User Research Enterprise (SURE), which employs expert researchers with experience of using mental health services.

She is a fellow of several prestigious societies, including the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Academy of Social Sciences and the British Psychological Society. She has been awarded grants from the Wellcome Trust, Tregaskis Bequest, British Council, National Institute of Health Research, Medical Research Council and the EU. She has won Marie Kessel Award, the NIMH Directors Award and three different BPS awards: the May Davidson, Shapiro and Promoting Equality in Research.

According to her, we need people with different skills and different perspectives for research: this is one of the reasons why the most successful research teams are mixed.

“Women offer new approaches as well as some of the same scientific skills that are necessary for a better team approach. I work with my daughter to encourage women to get into science and also to encourage men to accept us in teams. My daughter is an academic engineer and I’m sure that having a scientist mother helped to encourage her. We need more role models”, Til Wykes says.