Ms Sharon Haywood

• Qualifications:BSc Psychology (Hons), MSc Health Psychology (Distinction)
• Position:Research Associate
• Department:HAS - Allied Health Professions
• Telephone:+441173286224
• Email:Sharon.Haywood@uwe.ac.uk
• Social media:

About me

Sharon earned a first-class BSc in Psychology from the University of Toronto and an MSc in Health Psychology with distinction through Aston University. Prior to joining CAR, Sharon founded the NGO AnyBody Argentina in 2011 dedicated to challenging beauty standards and fighting size discrimination. She led her team in delivering the country's only annual national questionnaire regarding clothing size availability and the potential health impacts of not being able to find clothing in one's size, which is regularly cited by media and government. On several occasions Sharon presented these findings and her recommendations derived from them in the Senate and Congress in support of national public health legislation aimed at eradicating sizeism in the fashion industry. 

Since joining CAR in 2019 as part of the Dove Self-Esteem Project partnership team, she has assisted on various projects that have involved the development and evaluation of interventions intended to improve body image among young people, including a social media-based intervention for Indonesian adolescent girls, a body image school-based intervention for Indonesian adolescents, and a video game-based intervention for children in the US. She has also co-facilitated focus groups with adolescent girls and their coaches in Mexico City; supported the translation and validation of various measures related to body image and wellbeing for young people in Indonesia; assisted in the update of the 2020 single-session and five-session Dove Confident Me school workshops for the UK; led the 2021 Dove Confident Me workshop update for the US; and co-facilitated a project exploring the use of social media influencers to deliver body image content to adolescent girls. Outside the Dove-funded work, Sharon also led a mixed-method study with collaborators from the University of Buenos Aires exploring the relationship between body image and clothing size availability among Argentinian adolescents. 

As of February 2025, Sharon is pursuing a doctorate degree (DPhil) at UWE Bristol. 

Publications

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