Dr Kelly Birtwell (she/her) holds a PhD in Primary Care Research from the University of Manchester, UK. She is a chartered psychologist, a person-centred counsellor and a trained mindfulness teacher. For her PhD she developed a brief mindfulness-based intervention to improve wellbeing, using the person-based approach to intervention development. Kelly is interested in meditation safety and making mindfulness more accessible for underserved groups, particularly for people from areas of socioeconomic deprivation and for people who are neurodivergent. Kelly’s research interests have developed through her clinical experience of teaching mindfulness in a range of settings including the English National Health Service, workplace and community settings, and from speaking to autistic people about their experiences of mindfulness. Kelly is currently working on a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Manchester where she is using a ‘realist’ approach to explore how, why, and to what extent mindfulness ‘works’ (or not) for people from areas of socioeconomic deprivation.
