Team

Dr Frances Maratos
‘Compassion in the Classroom’ UK Lead, Curriculum Developer & Trainer

Frances Maratos is Associate Professor and Reader in Emotion Science at the University of Derby. Her research is centred on understanding psychological, neurological, cognitive and physiological correlates of emotional well-being, with a specific focus on understanding threat-processing and the use of compassion for emotion-regulation. She has worked with some of the world experts in understanding anxiety and how one can apply this knowledge to improve general well-being, improve pain coping, increase our understanding of disordered eating and increase our understanding of childhood behaviours. She has published over 25 papers in these specific areas, as well as a number of book chapters. In recent years she has also become a key individual within the compassion in schools movement, helping initiate and progress associated international research programmes, and leading on the UK arm of this research.

Outside of work, she has two football mad children in the UK educational system (one girl, one boy) and a growing number of adopted cats.

Wendy Wood
Curriculum Developer & Trainer

Wendy spent 16 years working as a mental health nurse in the NHS. She then moved on to become an assistant psychologist and studied for an MSc in counselling and psychotherapy. She worked in both private practice and the NHS as a counsellor/psychotherapist for over 20 years. Wendy began working at the University of Derby in 1997. She mainly worked in Counselling and psychotherapy subject area, but she has also worked across a wide variety of modules and programmes within Health and Social Care. During this time, she studied for a postgraduate Certificate in Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT), and also later was the programme lead for the postgraduate Certificate in Compassion Focused therapy, training around 120 people across the world in CFT collaboration with Professor Paul Gilbert (OBE). She was also Head of the Counselling and Psychotherapy subject area at the University of Derby for three years before semi retiring in 2017.Currently she has continued to work at the University as a Graduate Teaching Assistant to complete her PhD. Her research is exploring the experiences of therapists who have used compassion focused therapy in their personal and professional life. Other areas of interest include Compassion in Organisations and of course Compassion in Schools.

Professor Paul Gilbert
Curriculum Developer

Paul Gilbert, FBPsS, PhD, OBE is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Derby and honorary visiting Prof at the University of Queensland. In 2002-2004 he was a member of the first British Governments’ NICE guidelines for depression and then in March 2011 was awarded an OBE by the Queen for services to mental health. Until his retirement from the NHS in 2016 he was Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Derbyshire Health Care Foundation Trust and has been a practising clinical psychologist for over 40 years. Throughout this time, he has researched evolutionary approaches to psychopathology with a special focus on the roles of mood, shame and self-criticism in various mental health difficulties for which Compassion Focused Therapy was developed. He was made a Fellow of the British Psychological Society in 1993 and has written/edited 21 books and over 250 papers and book chapters. In 2006 he established the Compassionate Mind Foundation as an international charity To promote wellbeing through the scientific understanding and application of compassion (www.compassionatemind.co.uk). He established and is the Director of the Centre for Compassion Research and Training at Derby University UK. He has written and edited many books on compassion. His latest Book is Living Like Crazy.

Dr Marcela Matos
‘Compassion in the Classroom’ Portuguese Lead, Curriculum Developer & Trainer

Marcela Matos is a clinical psychologist and postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Research in Neuropsychology and Cognitive and Behavioural Intervention (CINEICC), University of Coimbra, in Portugal. She has developed extensive research in evolutionary clinical psychology and third wave cognitive-behavioural psychological approaches. She is an expert on shame memories and how they shape who we are. She has authored more than 50 scientific papers on the topics of compassion, psychological flexibility, emotional regulation, shame, self-criticism, psychopathology and wellbeing. She is a member of the International Compassionate Mind Foundation and the Portuguese Association for Mindfulness. Currently, her main research focus is on applying and testing the efficacy of compassion based group interventions in promoting mental and physical well-being in several populations (including schools), and investigating their impact on epigenetic mechanisms and physiological stress responses.