Mat White worked at the Centre between Oct 2011 to Oct 2020. As Lecturer then Senior Lecturer in Environmental Psychology he collaborated with many Centre colleagues looking the benefits and risks of contact with natural environments, specialising in particular on the relationships between aquatic ‘blue spaces’ and mental health and well-being.
During his time at the Centre Mat was involved in several large projects including the EU H2020 projects BlueHealth, Seas Oceans and Public Health in Europe (SOPHIE), the NIRH funded HPRU in Environmental Change and Health, and the Innovate UK funded Urban Greenspace and Valuation Toolkit (Greenkeeper).
Despite his recent move to the Environmental Psychology group at the University of Vienna Mat continues to collaborate with the team at ECEHH on such projects as the GCRF Funded BlueCommunities and NIHR funded Green/Blue spaces and mental health.
Publications: I have >110 publications in leading health (e.g. British Medical Journal), psychology (e.g. Psychological Science) and environmental science (e.g. Global Environmental Change) journals. Our NSF award winning graphic on pharmaceutical pollution was published in Science (2012), and my work on green space has been the focus of a Research Highlight (2014) and Outlook Article (2016) in the journal Nature. Our recent ‘120 minutes in nature’ paper gained global press coverage and currently has an altmetric score > 3,000.
Grants: I have been Co-I on >£24 million of grants from funders including: DEFRA, ESRC, EU Horizons2020, GCRF, Innovate UK, NERC and NIHR. Of this £2.4 million was as PI or WP lead.
Teaching: I have a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education and teach on the MSc in Environment and Human Health. I have also taught courses on Choice & Decision Making, Behaviour Change, Persuasion, Positive Psychology, and Human Factors. I have 3 current PhD students and 8 completions.
Impact: My work has received extensive media coverage including 7 stories on the BBC’s homepage. Our EST article was ranked 7th by the AAAS in terms of global coverage across all scientific disciplines in 2014. I have presented my findings in the House of Commons, the House of Lords, to DEFRA, PHE & the European Marine Board. My work was cited in DEFRA’s 25 Year Plan and impacted the EU’s Rome Declaration (Oct 2014) on marine environments.
Qualifications
PhD Social Psychology (Sheffield, 2004)
MSc Psychological Research Methods (Strathclyde, 1996)