Postdoctoral Fellow
Marlise Hofer
Marlise received her PhD from the University of British Columbia in 2020 and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at UVic. Her current research focuses on communication within close relationships (both parental and romantic) as well as how these close relationships influence health and wellbeing. Marlise is interested in discovering the avenues by which relationship partners improve health, such as via social odours or improved sleep.
Graduate Students
Julie Prud’homme
Julie completed her MSc in Psychiatry at McGill University and joined the Clinical Psychology graduate program at the University of Victoria in the fall of 2017. Her research focuses on mental health risk and resilience in LGBTQ+ young adults and the use of micro-longitudinal methodologies. Notably, she is interested in better understanding why LGBTQ+ young adults engage in risky health behaviours, including disordered eating, substance use, and self-injurious thoughts and behaviours, and how we can bolster resilience and prevent these behaviours from occurring. Her current work also includes knowledge mobilization of LGBTQ+ research, intending to improve mental health care access and provision for underserved LGBTQ+ communities in Canada and internationally.
Nicole Legg
Nicole is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Lifespan stream of the UVic Clinical Psychology program. Nicole competed her M.Sc. in Clinical Psychology at UVic and her Honours B.Sc. in Psychology at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. Nicole’s Masters research investigated how personality traits are related to disordered eating among first-year undergraduate students using longitudinal methods. Moving forward, Nicole hopes to investigate the functions and varying trajectories of disordered eating, along with patterns of comorbidity between disordered eating and other risky behaviours, among young adults using ecological momentary assessment research techniques. Nicole is a passionate advocate of mental health awareness and community knowledge translation of research. In her spare time, Nicole enjoys skiing, hiking, traveling, and yoga.
Carolyn Helps
Carolyn is a second-year Masters student in the Clinical Lifespan Psychology program. She previously completed her Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) in Psychology at UVic, and she subsequently worked as the Lab Coordinator of the Risky Behaviour Lab before transitioning to the role of a grad student. Her research interests focus on understanding when, how, and why individuals can manage, reduce, or cease engaging in self-damaging behaviours (especially nonsuicidal self-injury and suicidal thoughts and behaviours) and how this subsequently affects mental health and wellbeing. She also has a strong interest in involving people with lived experience in the research process.
Christina Robillard
Christina is a Ph.D. candidate in the Lifespan stream of the Clinical Psychology program at UVic. Christina completed her M.Sc. in Clinical Psychology at UVic and her Honours B.Sc. in Psychology at McGill University. Christina’s research applies a developmental framework to understand when and why some adolescents engage in self-damaging behaviours, including self-injury, disordered eating, and substance misuse. In particular, Christina is interested in combining longitudinal and microlongitudinal designs with multi-informant methods to examine how these behaviours develop within family systems. For instance, her dissertation integrates parent- and adolescent-reports to investigate how families navigate the disclosure of a youth’s self-injury, including how dynamic parent-child interactions support or hinder recovery. The goal of Christina’s research is to produce knowledge that can refine developmental models of self-damaging behaviours, foster empathy for individuals who engage in these behaviours, and improve therapeutic interventions.
Andrew Switzer
Andrew is a first-year PhD student in the Clinical Psychology program (Lifespan specialization) at the University of Victoria. Before coming to UVic, Andrew completed a M.A. in psychology at Concordia University in Montreal, where he studied the role of heart-rate variability, a biomarker of self-regulatory capabilities, in parents’ ability to cope with stress associated with raising a young child. As a member of the Risky Behaviour Lab, Andrew is most interested in studying non-suicidal self-injury and suicide-related thoughts and behaviours. Andrew is interested in applying novel methodologies (e.g., psychophysiology, wearables, EMA, etc.) to better understand when and why individuals engage in these behaviours, as well as identifying individual differences or contexts associated with higher risk. Andrew is also working on applying natural language processing techniques to text data collected from online peer-support forums for at-risk individuals, with the aim of identifying which thoughts, feelings, or themes are most commonly expressed in social support interactions online.
Alice Shen
Alice is a first year Masters student in the Lifespan stream of the Clinical Psychology program at UVic. Alice completed her Bachelor of Arts with an Honours Specialization in Psychology at Western University and worked as a Research Coordinator for an addictions medicine project at Fraser Health Authority. Her research interest involves biopsychosocial risk and protective factors underlying risky behaviours such as substance use and behavioural addictions, disordered eating, and non-suicidal self-injury. She is also interested in exploring how adult ADHD influences risky behaviours through factors such as emotion regulation, impulse control, and distress tolerance. Alice plans on taking a transdiagnostic and mixed-method approach to identify qualitative contextual gaps in the current literature and give a voice to people who are often overlooked in research and clinical settings. Her goal in research is to help implement effective primary prevention interventions that promote knowledge and skill-building to bolster resilience against common mental health issues.
UVic Smell Study Coordinator
Sydney Waddington
Syd is a Neurobiology-Psychology undergraduate student who joined the RBL in the summer of 2022 as a Research Assistant. Since then, Syd has been promoted to Research Coordinator for the lab’s smell study and is also pursuing her own research as an honors student. Syd is primarily interested in the overlap between biology and psychology and intends to pursue a career in psychiatry. Outside of school and research, Syd enjoys working in non-profit sectors, such as the Vancouver Island Neurosurgical Foundation, the Victoria Brain Injury Society, and NEED2; running outdoors; reading; adventuring with friends; and handcrafting greeting cards.
Daily Self-Monitoring Study Coordinator
Emma Kiedyk
Emma is the EMA Study Coordinator at the Risky Behaviour Lab. She completed her undergraduate degree at McGill University with an honors in psychology and a second major in world religions (specializing in Buddhist studies). After graduation, Emma worked as the lab coordinator at the Cognitive Science Lab at McGill before moving to South Korea for a year to teach English. Now, back on the West Coast, Emma is beyond thrilled to be coordinating the EMA study at the Risky Behaviour Lab. Her future career goals include delivering psychotherapy to underrepresented and struggling youth in the community. When she is not working, Emma enjoys painting, cooking, listening to audio books, and being out in nature with her dog, Chloe.
Honours Students
Sarah Engler
Photo and bio coming soon!
Sydney Waddington
Syd is a Neurobiology-Psychology undergraduate student who joined the RBL in the summer of 2022 as a Research Assistant. Since then, Syd has been promoted to Research Coordinator for one of the lab’s current studies and is also pursuing her own research as an honors student. Syd is primarily interested in the overlap between biology and psychology and intends to pursue a career in psychiatry. Outside of school and research, Syd enjoys working in non-profit sectors, such as the Vancouver Island Neurosurgical Foundation, the Victoria Brain Injury Society, and NEED2; running outdoors; reading; adventuring with friends; and handcrafting greeting cards.
Research Assistants
Lina Losier
Lina has been an RA since summer 2021, and was Dr. Turner’s Honours student from 2022-2023. Her thesis research examined whether engaging in self-damaging behaviours (SDBs) as a means of gender performance leads individuals to conform better to gender norms that are often conditioned as acceptable and admirable by society. Lina hopes her future research will examine gender as a spectrum (i.e., how do people experience and relate to their gender) and the intersections of SDBs, gender, sexuality, immigration history, socio-economic status and neurodivergence (esp. female-presenting people’s experiences). Lina has worked and volunteered in various community settings where she has met countless people who have showed her the critical need for compassionate research. She hopes to become a practicing clinical psychologist and engage in community-based research. When not studying/working, Lina enjoys spending time with the people she cares about, listening to podcasts, and spending time near the ocean.
Marina Low
Marina is a senior undergraduate student majoring in psychology at UVIC and has been with the Risky Behaviour Lab since 2021. Her research interests involve an intersectional feminist approach to clinical and social psychological topics, including trauma in the family system context, the experiences of people subjected to social marginalization, and addictions. Her involvement with the community organization Bridges for Women has influenced her trauma-informed approach, and she prefers to include people with lived experience in the research process.
Olivia Proud
Olivia is a fourth-year psychology major at UVic and is excited to join the Risky Behaviour Lab. Her main interests in psychology include mental disorders within childhood and adolescence and how that impacts their development across the lifespan. She hopes to continue her studies after her undergrad and pursue a degree in counselling psychology, as well as continue to work with youth in the community.
Laura Hoeflich
Laura is a second-year psychology student at UVic and happy to join the Risky Behaviour Lab. Her main interests in psychology are mental health disorders in adolescents and young adults; she is particularly interested in anxiety, mood, personality and psychotic disorders. After her undergrad, she hopes to pursue a degree in clinical psychology and do her part in removing the stigma surrounding mental health while making treatment more accessible.
Chitra Balakrishnan
Chitra graduated from the psychology honours program at UVic in 2021 under the supervision of Dr. Turner and Christina Robillard examining substance use and parental involvement in justice-involved youth. Prior to her thesis, Chitra was a research assistant on the Many Minds project as well as an author on the lab blog. She is now a post-baccalaureate research assistant on the Daily Self-Monitoring Project and hopes to pursue clinical psychology graduate school in the near future.
Lab Alumni
- Fionna Lambert – 2016-2017
- Breanne Bonhert – 2016-2018
- Tom Spence – 2017
- Emily Raymond – 2018
- Corrina Parent – 2018
- Leah de Zeeuw – 2018
- Cora Bell – 2016-2018
- Abigail Owens 2017-2018
- Leah Feltham 2017-2018
- Holly Pellatt – Honours Student 2017/2018
- Anthony Dean-Boucher – Honours Student 2017/2018
- Carolyn Helps – Lab Manager 2017/2018
- Matt Treble – 2017-2020
- Kirsten Milligan – 2018-2020
- Si Ning Yeo – Lab Manager 2018/2019
- Reina Stewart – 2018-2021
- Rachel Naiberg – 2019
- Emily Mann – 2019
- Cassandra Turner – Lab Manager 2019/2020
- Chitra Balakrishnan – Honours Student 2020/2021
- Alayna Gretton – Honours Student 2020/2021
- Tristen Lozinkski – 2017-2022
- Zack Senay – Honours Student 2018/2019, Lab Manager 2020-2022
- Thea Hoemberg – Work Study Student 2021-2022
- Jack Shaver – 2022
- Darian Colpitts – 2022
- Sara Blais – 2021-2023
- Monica Crawford – 2022-2023
- Zoe Dawson – 2021-2023
- Emily Spargo – RA 2020-2022, Lab Manager 2022/2023