Dr Angela Sweeney identifies as a trauma survivor and survivor researcher. She conducted her first survivor research project as an undergraduate student in 1998. In 2001 she joined the (then Sainsbury) Centre for Mental Health as a researcher on a study of the British Survivor Movement (On Our Own Terms, 2003) before moving to the Service User Research Enterprise where she gained a PhD in medical sociology.

After working at the Social Care Institute for Excellence and UCL, and completing an NIHR Post-Doctoral Fellowship at St George's, Angela returned to SURE as Director in 2021.

Angela is co-editor of Searching for a Rose Garden: challenging psychiatry, fostering Mad Studies (2016), and lead editor of This is Survivor Research (2009). She is currently undertaking an NIHR Development and Skills Fellowship and is a Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Lead at the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre.

Research interests

• Survivor led research
• Trauma informed approaches
• Parenting and the perinatal period
• Gender based violence
• Alternatives to biomedical psychiatry

Expertise and public engagement

• Co-Chair of the Trauma-Informed Community of Action.
• Loneliness and Social Isolation in Mental Health Research Network Advisory Group.
• NIHR ARC Mental Health Implementation Network Advisory Board.