Dr Kirsty Garbett

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  • Qualifications:DPhil, MSc, BSc (Hons)
  • Position:Research Fellow - Centre for Appearance Research
  • Department:HAS - Allied Health Professions
  • Telephone:+4411732 82911
  • Email:Kirsty.Garbett@uwe.ac.uk

About me

Kirsty Garbett is an applied body image researcher with extensive experience in the development and evaluation of interventions aimed to improve body confidence among adolescents.

Kirsty works as a Research Fellow across on multiple projects under UWE Bristol's academic partnership with the Dove Self-Esteem Project. Over the past ten years, she has been involved in multiple randomised controlled trials evaluating the acceptability and effectiveness of online and school-based interventions to improve body confidence among adolescents, in the UK, India, and Indonesia. 

Most recently, Kirsty collaborated on the development of a direct-to-girl, innovative online body confidence intervention, in partnership with Girl Effect, Percolate Galactic, the Dove Self-Esteem Project, and researchers at the University of Indonesia and the University of Hawaii. Kirsty led a team of academics to evaluate the acceptability and effectiveness of the intervention among adolescent Indonesian girls, the results of which have recently been published in Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Dedicated to ensuring that researchers utilise valid tools to assess key constructs in the field, Kirsty leads a number of projects translating and validating body image and related measures in new cultural contexts. She is currently conducting this work in Brazil, India, and Indonesia, in collaboration with academics from Kings College London, among others. 

Beyond this, Kirsty has a keen interest in the psychosocial motivations and outcomes of cosmetic procedures, both invasive and non-invasive. She is currently leading a systematic review of the evidence to date in this area, in order for this to act as a springboard for future work in this field.

Kirsty graduated with an MSc in Health Psychology from the University of Nottingham in 2013. Prior to this, Kirsty obtained a BA (Hons) degree in Psychology from the University of Strathclyde. In 2022, Kirsty completed her DPhil qualification in Health Psychology at UWE Bristol. Her thesis is titled, 'Scaling up evidence-based body-image interventions for adolescents: Studies from the UK, India, and Indonesia'. 

 


Area of expertise

body image; body image interventions; cultural adaptations of interventions; measures validation; cosmetic surgery; cosmetic procedures.

Publications

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