Dr Ellie Dorrans

(she/her)

BSc (Hons), PhD AFHEA FHEA

Publication

• Date
• Type

Research

I am a developmental psychologist researching child mental health and the family emotional environment. My work asks how parents' emotional experiences and communication relate to children's emotional and behavioural development. These include parental mental health, expressed emotion and facial expressivity. I also study how children perceive and respond to emotional information.

I focus on early and middle childhood, especially children aged 4–7 whose schools have raised concerns about emerging emotional or behavioural difficulties. Support at this age can make a real difference. I am motivated by producing evidence that helps families, schools and services support children before difficulties become entrenched. My work sits within developmental psychopathology and takes a transdiagnostic approach to children's internalising and externalising problems.

PhD research: parental expressed emotion and child mental health

My PhD was funded by the Waterloo Foundation and based in the Neurodevelopment Assessment Unit. It examined how the emotional climate of the family relates to children's emotional and behavioural problems. Expressed emotion captures the emotional tone of how a parent talks about their child, including criticism, emotional over-involvement, warmth and positive comments. I measured it with the Five-Minute Speech Sample (FMSS), in which parents speak freely about their child for five minutes.

In a sample of 247 families, expressed emotion predicted children's internalising and externalising problems more strongly than parental depression or anxiety. This suggests it may act as a transdiagnostic mechanism linking parent and child mental health (Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 2025).

I also looked beyond words, using automated facial expression analysis (iMotions/AFFDEX) to capture mothers' facial expressivity during the FMSS. Mothers who showed fewer and less intense facial expressions of anger while making negative comments had children with more severe symptoms. This held over and above maternal mental health and verbal expressed emotion (Scientific Reports, 2026).

Alongside this, I contributed to eye-tracking work within the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework. It showed that children with higher anxiety attend less to other people's eyes and show lower cognitive empathy (Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, 2024).

Special Guardianship Orders and kinship care

I was a Research Associate on Special Guardianship Families in Wales: Experiences and Support Needs (2024–2026). The project was funded by the Nuffield Foundation and led by Dr Lorna Stabler at CASCADE. I analysed linked administrative data in the SAIL Databank, using R, to examine which children in the care system are most likely to receive a Special Guardianship Order (SGO) and how care pathways vary across Wales. The project also profiled the strengths and support needs of children aged 4–7 in special guardianship and kinship care, through assessments in the Neurodevelopment Assessment Unit. Its three 2026 reports, on families' characteristics, care pathways, and children's strengths and support needs, are available on ORCA.

I continue to be interested in the experiences of children in long-term kinship care, including family relationships, carer–child interactions, emotional development and emotion recognition. This work aims to improve understanding of the strengths and support needs of these children and their carers, and to inform services and policy.

Upcoming work

I am developing several new projects that build on this work:

• Non-suicidal self-injury, sensory sensitivity and the emotional climate: how the family emotional climate relates to sensory sensitivity and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) in children
• Supporting children in the "missing middle": a qualitative analysis of the FMSS exploring the accommodations and supports parents put in place for children whose needs fall below the threshold for specialist services
• Physiological arousal and the emotional climate: how children's physiological arousal relates to the family emotional climate
• Empathy in young children: how empathy develops and its links with emotional and behavioural difficulties
• Mimicry in young children: children's facial and emotional mimicry and what it tells us about early social and emotional development
• The chronology and typology of the FMSS: how expressed emotion unfolds over the course of a speech sample and the types of comments parents make

Research approaches

My research uses quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods approaches. These include psychometric measures, behavioural and clinical assessments, eye tracking, automated facial expression analysis, administrative data linkage and qualitative exploration of family experiences. I am particularly interested in combining different sources of evidence to build a fuller understanding of children's lives and the contexts they grow up in.

Engagement and public involvement

I value working with families, practitioners and other researchers, and involving the public in shaping research questions and outputs. I run parent and carer public involvement groups, such as Your voice can shape the future of children's wellbeing support in Wales (2026), and contribute to the SGO advisory group. I have presented my work at the European Conference for Social Care Research, the BPS Welsh National Conference, Health and Care Research Wales events and Internal Public events.

Teaching

I teach across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the School of Psychology. These include the BSc Psychology, BSc Psychology with Professional Placement, MSc Child Psychological Conditions, MSc  Mental Health and MSc Psychology Conversion. My teaching includes:

• Lectures, seminars and assessment on Psychological Research (BSc, PS1014), Developmental Psychology (BSc, PS2011), Child Assessment Methods (MSc CPC; PST708), Developmental Origins of Psychopathology (MSc CPC, PST7019) and, Biological Psychology and Individual Differences (BSc, PS2025; MSc, PST724)
• Postgraduate seminars and workshops on the MSc Child Psychological Conditions

I supervise BSc final-year research projects and MSc dissertations, and support students during their professional placement year. I am also a personal tutor, a role I value greatly. I help students set long-term goals, gain research experience and get academic and pastoral support. Beyond my own students, I have trained and supervised Graduate Teaching Assistants, work with the Learning and Teaching Academy to co-develop training for MSc Graduate Tutors, and mentor undergraduate research volunteers.

I am a Fellow of Advance HE (FHEA). My teaching was shortlisted for Personal Tutor of the Year in the 2026 Enriching Student Life Awards and nominated for Most Outstanding Use of the Learning Environment in 2025.

Biography

2026 – present: I am a Lecturer (Teaching and Research) in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University. I teach across undergraduate and postgraduate psychology programmes, supervise undergraduate and MSc research projects. I work closely with the Neurodevelopmental Unit (NDAU) at Cardiff University and my research looks at how family emotional environments shape children's mental health.

2025 – 2026: I was a Teaching Associate in the School of Psychology, designing and delivering teaching on the BSc Psychology and the MSc Child Psychological Conditions. At the same time, I was a Research Associate on the Nuffield Foundation-funded Special Guardianship Families in Wales project with CASCADE in the School of Social Sciences. On that project I analysed linked administrative data in the SAIL Databank to understand children's pathways through care. I became a Fellow of Advance HE in 2026.

2022 – 2025: I completed a PhD in Psychology, funded by a Waterloo Foundation studentship and supervised by Professor Stephanie van Goozen, Dr Amy Paine and Dr Chris Hobson. My thesis, Parental Expressed Emotion: An Analysis of Verbal and Facial Expressed Emotion and Associations with Child Emotional and Behavioural Problems, drew on transdiagnostic assessments of children aged 4–7 and their caregivers in the Neurodevelopment Assessment Unit. I passed my viva in December 2025. During my PhD I was a Graduate Teaching Assistant on the MSc Child Psychological Conditions, where I led a team of GTAs, and a postgraduate tutor on the BSc Psychology. I became an Associate Fellow of Advance HE in 2025.

2021 – 2022: I worked as a Research Assistant at the MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics on the NIMH-funded DiGEN project, under Professor Marianne van den Bree. I coordinated the recruitment and assessment of families across the CONVERGE, DiGEN, IMAGINE-2 and ERK Pathway studies.

2018 – 2022: I completed a BSc in Psychology with Professional Placement (BPS accredited) at Cardiff University. For my placement year (2020–2021) I joined the MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, where I conducted clinical assessments of children and young people aged 7–17 with rare genetic conditions, and their siblings. My first-class dissertation, supervised by Professor Lawrence Wilkinson and Dr Anna Moon, examined the effects of prepubertal stress on FKBP51 and FKBP52 expression in the ventral hippocampus and hypothalamus of Cacna1c+/- rats.

Honours and awards

• Shortlisted, Personal Tutor of the Year, Enriching Student Life Awards (2026); nominated in five categories
• Best Poster Presentation, BPS Developmental Psychology Section Annual Conference (2025)
• Nominated, Most Outstanding Use of the Learning Environment, Enriching Student Life Awards (2025)
• Best Oral Presentation, Cardiff University Postgraduate Research Conference (2024)

Funding

• Health and Care Research Wales, Enabling Involvement Fund (2026; £500)
• School of Psychology Early Career Fund, Cardiff University (2026; £1000)
• School of Social Sciences Research Fund, Cardiff University (2026, £1,240.70)
• Cardiff University equipment funding, with Professor Stephanie van Goozen: iMotions software (2025, £1,485.38)
• Health and Care Research Wales, Enabling Involvement Fund (2025, £500)
• Cardiff University equipment funding, with Professor Stephanie van Goozen: iMotions software (2024, £1,485.38) and eye tracker (2024, £1,300)
• The Waterloo Foundation, funded PhD studentship: an RDoC approach to understanding children with neurodevelopmental conditions (2022 – 2025, approx. £55,500)

Professional memberships

• Member of the British Psychological Society (BPS), 2026 - present
• Fellow of Advance HE (FHEA), 2026 – present
• Associate Fellow of Advance HE (AFHEA), 2025 – 2026

Academic positions

• Lecturer (Teaching and Research), School of Psychology, Cardiff University (April 2026 – present)
• Teaching Associate, School of Psychology, Cardiff University (October 2025 – March 2026)
• Research Associate, Special Guardianship Families in Wales project, CASCADE, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University (July 2025 – July 2026)
• Graduate Teaching Assistant, MSc Child Psychological Conditions, School of Psychology, Cardiff University (October 2022 – September 2025)
• Postgraduate Research Student, Neurodevelopment Assessment Unit, School of Psychology, Cardiff University (October 2022 – July 2025)
• Postgraduate Tutor, BSc Psychology, School of Psychology, Cardiff University (October 2022 – June 2023)
• Research Assistant, MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Cardiff University (June 2021 – October 2022)
• Placement Student, MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Cardiff University (October 2020 – June 2021)

Speaking engagements

• BPS Developmental Psychology Section Annual Conference, Durham, September 2026 (talk)
• European Conference for Social Care Research, Aberdeen, April 2026 (talk)
• BPS Welsh National Conference, Cardiff, November 2025 (talk)
• BPS Developmental Psychology Section Annual Conference, September 2025 (poster; Best Poster Presentation)
• Health and Care Research Wales Support and Delivery Day, July 2025 (talk)
• Early Career Academic Research Showcase, Cardiff University, June 2025 (talk)
• BPS Welsh National Conference, Cardiff, September 2024 (talk)
• Mental Health for Future Generations, Cardiff University, May 2024 (poster)
• Cardiff University Postgraduate Research Conference, November 2023 (talk)
• Cardiff University Postgraduate Research Conference, April 2023 (poster)

Committees and reviewing

• Member, School of Psychology Ethics Committee, Cardiff University (2026 – present)
• Peer reviewer, BMC Psychology, Discover Psychology and Scientific Reports, Springer Nature (2026 – present)
• Peer reviewer, Child & Family Behavior Therapy and Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes, Taylor & Francis (2026 – present)
• Member, Early Career Academic (ECA) Forum, School of Psychology, Cardiff University (2025 – present)
• Member, Special Guardianship Order project advisory group, CASCADE (2025 – 2026)
• Peer reviewer, Developmental Science (2024 – present)

Supervisions

Current supervision

Abedulrahman Abou Dahesh

News articles

A mother’s facial expression impacts children’s mental health

15 October 2026

Children’s mental health is influenced not only by what a mother says say, but how she expresses her emotions.