CHAIR:

Professor Paul Kennedy (National Spinal Injuries Centre, Aylesbury, UK; Oxford Institute of Clinical Psychology Training, UK)

Professor Paul Kennedy is Director (Academic and Research) of the Oxford Institute of Clinical Psychology Training, and Head of Clinical Psychology at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, with specific clinical responsibility for the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. He studied at the University of Ulster and Queens University, Belfast and has worked in clinical health psychology since graduating from his clinical training in 1984. He has established clinical health psychology services in a number of areas. He has published over 90 scientific papers for peer-reviewed journals, has been a contributor to a number of book chapters, has co-edited the Wiley Handbook of Clinical Health Psychology and edited The Psychological Management of Physical Disabilities. He is an active researcher with a broad portfolio of research on adjustment, coping with chronic illness and disabilities and physical rehabilitation.

Professor Paul Kennedy serves on the international editorial board of the journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings, Neuro-rehabilitation and Rehabilitation Psychology. He was elected a Fellow of the British Psychological Society in 1999, served on the Committee of the Division of Health Psychology, and was made a Fellow of Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford in 2001. He is founding Chair of the Multidisciplinary Association of Spinal Cord Injury Professionals. In 2002 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Award by the American Association of Spinal Cord Injury Psychologists and Social Workers, and in 2005 was awarded a visiting Fellowship to Australia by the New South Wales Government, Ministry of Science and Medical Research. He became Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford in 2006 and is an enthusiastic scientist practitioner who enjoys the interplay between service provision, research and training. In 2009 he was awarded the Chairman’s Award (Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust) as part of the National Spinal Injuries Centre CARF team. 

COMMITTEE MEMBER:

Dr Peter Lude (the Swiss Paraplegic Research & Swiss Paraplegic Centres, Switzerland) 

Dr Peter Lude works in his private practice as a psychological psychotherapist in Bad Zurzach, Switzerland. He is a lecturer in rehabilitation psychology at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (zhaw), School of Applied Psychology, and involved in national and international research projects.

 
In 1984, Dr Peter Lude had a swimming accident resulting in a high spinal cord injury. After one year of rehabilitation in the Swiss Paraplegic Centre Basel, he studied clinical psychology, social psychology and psychopathology at the University of Bern. Following his studies he completed a four-year postgraduate course in cognitive-behavioural and interpersonal psychotherapy at the University of Bern to get his license to lead a private practice. He is also licensed in clinical hypnosis and well trained in the person-centered approach and a member of the respective professional associations. He supervises postgraduate psychotherapy students, psychotherapists as well as rehabilitation psychologists. His research is confined to the psychological aspects of the adjustment and coping process to spinal cord injury. His motivation to investigate this process stems from his personal experience as a rehabilitation patient and from the demanding process of integration into the society. In 2002 he obtained a PhD at the University of Bern. Since 2003 he has been a member of the advisory board of the Manfred Sauer Foundation, Germany, who is specialising in the empowerment of people with spinal cord injury. In 2004, he was awarded the Ludwig Guttmann-Prize by the Deutschsprachige Medizinische Gesellschaft für Paraplegie - DMGP e.V. (German Speaking Society for Paraplegia) for an excellent scientific study. In the same year, he became an affiliate faculty member of the Swiss Paraplegic Research and Swiss Paraplegic Centre Nottwil. Dr Peter Lude is a member of the municipal council where he is in charge of the social and health department.

COMMITTEE MEMBER:

Dr Magnus Elfström (Mälardalen University, Sweden)

Magnus Elfström is a  senior lecturer in psychology and licensed psychologist. Previously, Dr Elfström was a research assistant at the Health Care Research Unit, Institute of Medicine, Sahlgrenska Academy at Göteborg University. He also was a guest lecturer at various courses in the Department of Psychology and the Institute of Odontology at Göteborg University.

Dr Elfström became a licensed psychologist in 1999, and then worked with assessment of chronic pain and fatigue at the National Hospital of Insurance as well as at a Public Dental Service Clinic. The work at the Public Dental Service also included assessment and treatment of people with severe dental fear.

Furthermore, Dr Elfström has had consulting assignments as clinical supervisor in psychology at the diabetes clinic at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital and has repeatedly been an external evaluator of psychological and multiprofessional treatments in public primary care.

In 2003, Magnus Elfström was awarded a PhD at Göteborg University. His thesis dealth with coping strategies and health-related quality of life in persons with traumatic spinal cord lesion.

In teaching, Dr Elfström is currently involved in courses at undergraduate levels, mainly in health psychology, conversational skills and supervision of essays. In research, Dr Elfström takes part in projects regarding measurement of psychological health in primary health care settings, as well as coping strategies in dental fear and in spinal cord lesion.

SECRETARY:

Mrs Linda Hall (National Spinal Injuries Centre, Aylesbury, UK)

Linda is Secretary/Administrator for the Department of Clinical Psychology, where she has worked since September 1996.  She is responsible for providing secretarial and administrative support to this busy and highly productive department.  She also has overall responsibility for the administration of the NSIC’s Needs Assessment Checklist. 

Linda assists in the organisation of the ESPA Conferences and for a number of years was also Secretary to the Multidisciplinary Association of Spinal Cord Injury Professionals (MASCIP).