Professor Lucia Valmaggia PhD

I am a Professor in Clinical Psychology and Head of the Virtual Reality Research Lab, I am also a Hon. Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust.

My research has been in two areas; Early Intervention and Virtual Reality (VR) applied to mental health. My work has focused on the prevention and early detection of mental health problems, in particular psychosis. I have extensive experience in service implementation in the community and I set up the first service for prevention and early detection of psychosis in a prison setting.

I lead the IoPPN Virtual Reality Research Lab (VR Lab), an interdisciplinary group of clinical academics, clinicians, neuroscientists, post-doctoral researchers working alongside a VR developer and industry partners. We conduct studies in psychosis, eating disorders, depression, autism, epidemiology, discrimination, gambling, prevention, and early intervention.

I have published extensively, and I have been named Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers in 2019, 2020 and 2021.

In 2021 I was awarded the British Psychological Society Presidents’ Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge

I am a Visiting Professor at KU Leuven and the Past-President of IEPA Early Intervention in Mental Health.

Research Interests

• Virtual reality for mental health
• Early Intervention
• Early detection

Teaching

I contribute to all aspects of the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology programme, I am also a Research Tutor and the Head of Selection.

Expertise and Public Engagement

Our work in VR received international media coverage (Aljazeera, BBC World, Newsweek, Daily Beast, Twitter) as well as very positive reactions from service users and carers. I use Twitter to promote my work.