Birkbeck graduate receives two top Psychology awards for research and academic excellence
Tanya Botha received both the British Psychological Society Undergraduate Award and Birkbeck's Honorary Research Fellows in Quantitative Psychology Prize for her research into ways to boost emotional resilience and wellbeing in individuals at risk of depression and anxiety.
Tanya Botha from Birkbeck's Department of Psychological Sciences has been awarded two top Psychology awards for research and academic excellence.
Along with graduating first in her class and winning the prestigious British Psychological Society Undergraduate Award, Tanya Botha has also received the Honorary Research Fellows in Quantitative Psychology Prize from Birkbeck for the best final-year undergraduate psychology project of the year using quantitative methods.
Tanya’s project investigated ways to boost emotional resilience and wellbeing in individuals prone to high levels of rumination, a major risk factor for depression and anxiety, using innovative neurocognitive interventions. These interventions were developed to increase attentional control and processing efficiency using daily, web-based training tasks. The findings of this research are clinically important and add to a growing body of research expounding the efficacy of brief, computer-based cognitive interventions for reducing the symptoms of some of the most burdensome psychological disorders.
Her research report has also been submitted for consideration by the Experimental Psychology Society and British Science Association for their Undergraduate Project Prize – the results of which are due in late October.
Tanya said: “I am incredibly pleased to receive these awards. I want to say a massive thank you to Professor Nazanin Derakshan, my project supervisor, for all her help, support and advice. She has given me a myriad of opportunities far beyond that which is expected of an undergraduate supervisor. I also want to thank my colleague on this project, Merry Wright, for all the hard work she put in to this investigation, too. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at Birkbeck. Studying here has been a truly transformative experience.”
Tanya has now been offered an opportunity to continue collecting data for her project, with the aim of publishing the findings in a major psychology journal – a rare opportunity for an undergraduate.
The Birkbeck Department of Psychological Sciences has a strong reputation for its research, having been ranked 5th in the UK in the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF).