Dr. Rebecca Murray

Biography

I obtained my 1st class Psychology Bsc (Hons) degree from the University of Huddersfield in 2011. I was awarded my Human and Health Sciences doctorate in 2017. My thesis was titled “A life lived differently: An exploration of how living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) impacts upon people’s identity”.

My academic career emerged alongside my PhD studentship; I began lecturing in Psychology at both the University of Huddersfield and Leeds Beckett University in 2012. In the summer of 2023, I joined the University of Bradford.

Research

My research interests lie in Health and Social Psychology; both mainstream and critical. My doctoral research focused on the injustices surrounding the lived experience of contentious chronic illnesses. A re-conceptualisation of Wenger’s ‘Communities of Practice’ theory (CoP) provided an opportunity to unpick the jeopardised identities and quality of life (QoL) of people living with CFS/ME whilst also offering insights into the resuscitation of the jeopardised identity and QoL in CFS/ME. I employed a socio-cultural ontology which revealed both distal and proximal influences. I was subsequently able to construct ill health and attendant behaviours as a distributed phenomenon. There are very few scholars employing this theoretical resource in this way which enabled a more emancipatory framework around illness to emerge.

I am a qualitative researcher, and I am passionate about virtual methodologies. Such methodologies in my experience better enable the meaningful, truthful, and representative participation of those often silenced in society and disadvantaged in research.