Claudia Goncalves – Research Assistant

Cláudia Gonçalves is a Research Assistant working across multiple studies in the Psychosis Research Unit (PRU). She is currently part of the Let’s Talk study, where she is involved in liaison with clinical teams as well as the recruitment and assessment of participants. Additionally, she is working on the write-up of research papers for publication and helping with the set-up of the RAPID trial, which starts participant recruitment in 2022.

Cláudia Gonçalves is from the sunny beach town of Cascais, Portugal. She first moved to the United Kingdom in 2015 to study Psychology at King’s College London (KCL), where she discovered an interest in psychosis research. To further explore this interest, she went on to study the MSc in Early Intervention in Psychosis at the KCL Institute of Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience, which she completed with Distinction in September 2020.

During her studies, Cláudia acquired diverse working experience. This included a part-time job at Nando’s throughout her undergraduate degree, a job as Senior Mentor for the National Citizen Service in 2018, a research placement in an Early Intervention Service, and volunteer work with multiple organisations including a suicide prevention helpline. Having had to move back home after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Cláudia was keen to apply her skills to a clinical research setting and ended up relocating to Manchester to work in PRU in October 2021.

Cláudia Gonçalves is passionate about early intervention in mental health and research that aims to reduce the impact of stigma and discrimination on people with lived experience of psychosis. Her MSc thesis was on the topic of how experiences of discrimination interact with genetics to predict clinical outcomes in people at high risk for psychosis. Cláudia hopes to pursue a career in research, and plans to move to Australia to undertake a PhD in stigma in early psychosis.

In her free time, Cláudia enjoys doing yoga, cat sitting, and going to gigs. On rainy weekends, her time is often spent in the company of a good book and many cups of tea.