Keele University is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Abigail Locke as the new Head of School for Psychology, who will take up her post at the start of the next academic year. 

Professor Locke joins Keele from the University of Bradford where she is currently the Head of Psychology, having previously served as the Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Transfer in the University’s Faculty of Social Sciences. 

Her expertise is in critical social psychology with a strong focus on gender, health and identities, meaning her research is highly interdisciplinary. She regularly works with and across the social, health and life sciences from a psychological perspective.  

In recent years her research has focused on issues around health and wellbeing in parenting, where she has looked at issues around mothering and fathering identities, advice given to parents and digital families. 

Professor Locke completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology at Loughborough University, where she also studied a PhD in Discursive Psychology, and has held academic posts at the Universities of Coventry, Derby, Loughborough, Huddersfield and most recently Bradford. 

She also has well-established links to the psychology community nationally and internationally, and is the Current Chair of the British Psychology Society’s (BPS) Psychology of Women and Equalities Section, Secretary of the International Society for Critical Health Psychology (ISCHP), a founding member of the Association of European Qualitative Researchers in Psychology (EQuiP), and a previous Deputy-Chair of the BPS Research Board and Trustee. 

Professor Locke said: “I am thrilled to be joining Keele’s School of Psychology and I’m pleased to be working alongside colleagues with such a wide range of expertise representing the diversity of the discipline.” 

Professor Jonathan Wastling, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean for the Faculty of Natural Sciences added: “We are delighted at the appointment of Professor Locke to Head of School of Psychology and look forward to benefitting from her leadership; her work on social psychology and health and well-being is especially timely and we welcome the links she plans to make across the wider University in this area.”