This autumn, two new BeGOOD team members joined the Citizens: EIE project. Citizens: EIE aims to investigate young people’s moral attitudes to, and judgements about a range of early intervention strategies to manage moral and behavioural development. Working with young people, the project will progress through several phases: scoping and defining questions; methods development and testing, qualitative research, and e-research tools innovation.

Citizens: EIE will work closely with young people who access different services; including mental health, juvenile justice, and special educational needs, continuing a longstanding commitment to supporting the inclusion of young people in ethics research and development.

Gabriela Pavarini

Gabriela Pavarini is a postdoctoral researcher at the BeGOOD project, working to develop and lead Citizens-EIE. She completed a PhD in Psychology at the Centre for Music and Science, University of Cambridge, on the effects of movement synchrony on human emotions and social relationships. Alongside her PhD she co-led the Cambridge Moral Psychology Group, a platform for interdisciplinary exchange in the field of morality. Gabriela was awarded an MPhil (distinction) in Social and Developmental Psychology from Cambridge, and a B.A. (1st class Hons.) in Psychology from the Federal University of Sao Carlos, Brazil.

Gabriela is currently setting up a young people’s advisory group (YPAG) to support Citizens:EIE. YPAG members will bring their own ideas about ethics to the project, and help shape its research questions, priorities and methods. With the group’s support, Gabriela will design a study on young people’s views on early intervention for antisocial behaviour considering current developments in genetics and neuroscience. This study will focus primarily on young people who are frequently told to ‘be good’, including those diagnosed with conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and ADHD.

Arianna Manzini

Arianna Manzini is a Wellcome Trust-funded DPhil student at the Oxford Department of Psychiatry. Arianna holds an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele (Milan, 2014), an MA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics of Health from University College London (2015), and an Erasmus Mundus MSc in Bioethics from KU Leuven (2016).

Arianna’s research within the Citizens: EIE team focuses on children and adolescents’ perspectives on the ethical issues emerging from the recent genetic and neuroscientific advances in the identification of biological correlates to psychiatric illnesses. Arianna is currently working on the review of the ethics and scientific literature to scope and define her research questions and on the development of the appropriate methodology to address them. Both steps will be informed by the work of the young people’s advisory group which is being set up as part of Citizens:EIE. Arianna also co-leads the Psy-Ethics Journal Club within the Oxford Department of Psychiatry.