Role: Affiliated Researcher

Maisie Matthews is a PhD candidate in Social Science at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, UCL. Her ESRC-funded doctoral research focuses on identity, wellbeing, and family life in bisexual father families, using a mixed-methods approach including both survey and interview data. Her previous MPhil research at the University of Cambridge took a qualitative approach to explore identity management among bisexual fathers. Maisie is interested in researching diverse and underrepresented families from a social psychological perspective, and her work has been published in the Journal of Family Psychology. She is now working as a Researcher at Cordis Bright.

Chiara Fusco (she/her) is a clinical psychologist. She holds a PhD in Psychology, Linguistics, and Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy), with a thesis on the links between parents’ psychological functioning and disclosure practices in donor-conceived families headed by heterosexual couples in Italy.

Her research focuses on the psychological correlates of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), donor conception, and the disclosure of genetic origins to donor-conceived individuals. Her interests also lie in the application of attachment theory to both childhood and adult relationships, as well as in understanding the developmental and family dynamics associated with non-traditional family forms, including adoptive, LGBTQIA+, and donor-conceived families. Her methodological expertise includes both quantitative and qualitative approaches, with a focus on cross-sectional study designs and survey-based research.

She is also actively involved in knowledge exchange and impact-oriented activities, contributing to the dissemination of research findings to clinical settings, professionals, and the wider public. Her work aims to promote evidence-based psychological support for individuals and families involved in ART and other pathways to non-traditional parenthood.

Alongside her academic work, Chiara is training as a psychotherapist and is currently completing her clinical internship at the ART Centre and the Family Counselling Service of the Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, in Milan, Italy.

Scopus Profile: Chiara Fusco Scopus Profile

Jo Lysons was appointed to Murray Edwards College in the position of Research Associate in April 2024, to lead a project investigating women and non-binary students’ wellbeing and experiences of teaching and learning at Cambridge. Dr Lysons completed her PhD in developmental psychology at the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge. Her work has focused on psychosocial functioning in families created via gamete donation and other non-traditional family forms, investigating parents’ and children’s mental health and psychosocial adjustment, the quality of parent-child relationships in these families, and children’s perceptions of their families.
Dr Lysons’ research interests also include development, learning, and education over the life-course; previous projects have focused on evaluating the assessment of early child development within the Health Visiting system in England (in collaboration with the Children and Families Policy Research Unit, UCL), and investigating gender differences in social media use, sleep quality, and mental health amongst British adolescents.

Sarah is a Lecturer in Developmental Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research explores parent-child relationships and the psychological wellbeing of family members across family transitions (e.g., becoming a parent, separation or divorce) and diverse family forms (e.g., elective co-parents, those created through assisted reproductive technologies, LGBTQIA+ parent-headed families). She is a collaborator on ongoing international prospective longitudinal studies, uses multiple methods in her research and has advanced quantitative expertise. Her current ESRC-funded research is exploring children’s relationships with their parents, adjustment, and experiences of different post-separation child arrangements in England and Scotland. She completed her ESRC-funded doctoral and postdoctoral research at the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge.

Dr Susie Bower-Brown is a Lecturer in Social Psychology at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, UCL. Susie is a critical social psychologist whose research uses qualitative methods to explore LGBTQ+ identities and diverse family forms. Susie’s work has particularly focused on the social experiences of trans and non-binary parents and adolescents, exploring how they resist and navigate stigma. Susie has also explored the experiences of parents pursuing novel paths to parenthood, including assisted reproductive technologies and elective co-parenting. Susie is currently leading ‘Family Beyond the Binary’, funded by an ESRC New Investigator Grant (2025-2028). The project explores the family experiences of non-binary individuals in the UK.

Dr Susan Imrie (she/her) is a developmental psychologist and has held lectureships at the University of Cambridge and UCL. Her research has focused on family functioning in new family forms, and in particular parent-child relationship quality, child development, and children’s perceptions of their families in families created using IVF and egg donation, surrogacy, and in families with trans parents. She has also worked on several projects on family estrangement. She is currently Head of Wellbeing at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, and alongside this role is working on a project examining the relations between the teaching and learning environment and student wellbeing and mental health. She uses quantitative and qualitative approaches in her research.

Dr Catherine (Kitty) Jones is a lecturer in Developmental Psychopathology at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, King’s College London. She completed her ESRC-funded PhD at the University of Cambridge, designing and conducting a study of primary caregiver father families. Her postdoctoral work at Cambridge and UCL focused on mixed-methods approaches to study parents and children in families formed through the use of assisted reproduction. Kitty continues to study diverse family forms, alongside leading research projects on Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder.

Sophie is a Reader in Family Psychology at the University of Sussex. Sophie first completed a doctorate in social psychology and remains interested in the intersection of social and developmental theories in the study of non-normative families, including families formed through assisted reproduction. She has conducted some of the first studies of children and young people’s perspectives and experiences in families headed by single mothers by sperm donation; two-parent families via sperm donation, egg donation, and surrogacy; and trans parent families. Most recently, she led the Young Adults Study: www.youngadultsstudy.co.uk. Sophie’s research is primarily qualitative, with some studies adopting multi and mixed methods designs.