Kirsty completed her PhD entitled: ‘Adolescent Bullying and intrasexual Competition: Body Concerns and Self-Promotion Tactics amongst Bullies, Victims and Bully-Victims’ under the supervision of Professor Dieter Wolke in 2017
James Adelman (Psychology), one of the judging panellists said: “The panel has had great difficulty in deciding among several excellent papers that were published by our Department’s PGR community last year and were ultimately unable to cut down the list to fewer than three. This difficulty reflects both the quality and diversity of the type of research our postgraduates do: Excellent examples of different styles of research can have very different strengths”.
This is what the judging panel said about the award-winning publication:
Lee, K., Guy, A., Dale, J., & Wolke, D. (2017). Adolescent desire for cosmetic surgery: associations with bullying and psychological functioning. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 139, 1109-1118.
This paper examines the relationships between bullying, psychological functioning, and desire for cosmetic surgery. Part of an ambitious broader program examining a cohort of over 2500 adolescents, the study showed that the link between bullying involvement and desire for cosmetic surgery is mediated by psychological functioning for bullying victims, but not for bullies. These results provide deeper theoretical understanding of psychological processes underlying bullies and bully victims’ raised interest in cosmetic surgery, and have implications for assessing whether cosmetic surgery is psychologically appropriate in clinical settings.