Dr Maria Gialama

Maria is a clinical health psychologist and psychotherapist with extensive professional experience in academia, hospital settings and community-based NGOs. She has worked with vulnerable and disadvantaged populations, including older people with cognitive impairments/neurodegenerative diseases (e.g. Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases, NHS), homeless, impoverished and long-term unemployed people (in a project co-funded by the European Union under the European Social Fund), as well as unaccompanied minors/refugees/migrants and asylum seekers (Project funded by European Commission- Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid and the Greek Ministry of Finance and Development). She has conducted high quality collaborative research at national and international level (including projects funded by the European Union) and has taught on several areas within psychology, research and counselling/psychotherapy in Greek, British and Irish higher education institutions.

She holds a BSc (Hons) degree in Psychology (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), a MSc in Health Psychology (University of Bath, UK) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Psychotherapy (Hellenic Institute of Psychology and Health, Thessaloniki, Greece). For her PhD (Department of Psychology, Maynooth University, Ireland) she used the UK’s MRC guidelines for developing complex interventions to develop a novel, mindfulness based dance movement psychotherapy intervention to promote meaningful engagement and improve the mood, quality of life and well-being of people at the early stages of dementia and their primary caregivers whilst also highlighting the role of lifestyle interventions in promoting health/ mental health, wellbeing and social engagement.