The Wong Lab studies the underlying psychological causes of antisocial behaviour, schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, and mental health across the lifespan. Using large datasets, international birth cohort studies in Mauritius, US, and the UK, and participatory methods we aim to co-create resources with, and for, various populations (e.g., schoolchildren, adolescents, adults in the general population, and patients with schizophrenia) and to improve the prevention of crime and mental illness. Our work has been funded by research councils and charities. Study findings have contributed to government policy documents and discussions in the UK, Wales, and Scotland primarily on child and adolescent mental health.
Read our latest papers here.
*Recent News*
Royal Society Pairing Scheme – ‘A Week in Westminster’
As one of 30 scientists selected for the Royal Society Pairing Scheme, Keri spent a week in March shadowing Baroness Neville-Jones, current Science and Technology Committee member and a member of the House of Lords. In June/July 2025, the Baroness shadowed Keri across her work at the Home Office, youth clubs, and UCL as well. Read about the scheme and her reflections here.
Dr Keri wong joins Royal Society UK Young Academy
Keri joins as one of 42 of the newest member of the UK Young Academy – supported by all 8 learned societies and councils in the UK – Keri attended the interdisciplinary academy induction event in March which was held at the Academy of Medical Sciences and Royal Society, and has since been the UKYA speaker/delegate at the Science Advice Mechanism contributing to #science4policy discussion informing the EU Commission. Read the press release here.
Current Research Projects
‘Creativity for all’ – a UKRI Research england project
A new parntership started this June 2025 with the National Saturday Club (NSC), a national organisation who provides creative activities for deprived young children who otherwise would not have access to creative activities. Working with NSC, our UCL team including student researchers Thain Matmati and Isil Bustag will conduct a multiple site/timepoint evaluation of how NSC activities impact 13-16yo’s mental health and behavioural outcomes over an 8 week period. The goal is co-create with club tutors and young people themselves a tool that could help other charities in this sector gauge how activities impact young people’s mental health. This project is funded by UKRI Resarch England HEIF and Prof. Jane Simmonds (UCL Institute of Child Health) is a co-investigator.
‘Making Visible Invisible Communities’ – The Visible Co-Space Study
Funded by the UCL Grand Challenges Mental Health Pump-Priming Award we ask the question: ‘How do community centres or youth hubs as spaces hinder and/or promote mental health support needs of young people invisible to school and healthcare settings?’ In collaboration with Dr Lusi Morhayim (CI; Barlett School of Architecture), community centres, and young people, this project will run from 2024 to 2025 and the study pre-registration can be found here.
UKRI ESRC Policy Fellowship @ UK Home Office
Dr Keri Wong is one of 44 academics seconded to the UK Home Office from 2024-25 as part of the UKRI ESRC Policy Fellowship to facilitate better understanding and translation of research to policy and practice. Specifically she will be working on evaluation of interventions and programmes pertaining to public safety and the criminal justice. Keri is on secondment until December 2025. Find out more here.
Grassroots Evaluation Study – of a school antibully programme
Running from 2023-27 (Keri as Co-I), this is a Youth Endowment Funded evaluation study on reducing school bullying in the UK involving schools in England and Wales. Working alongside the Behavioral Insights Team (BIT) and an Oxford research team, this project tests whether the USA HeadStart antibullying programme is effective in the UK.
Completed Research Projects
UCL Innovation Network Funding – Growing the Centre for Education and Criminal Justice (ECJ)
From 2023-24, we will be growing our network and offerings to students and researchers at the UCL Centre for Education and Criminal Justice network. This involves: 1) Organising a summer conference on ‘Building Hope’ for the future of education in the criminal justice; 2) setting up student interneship opportunities with local community partners; and 3) building a database of contacts for academics, policymakers, and practitioners who are working in education and criminal justice.
The British Academy Early Career Network – London Cluster – a network for ECRs in SHAPE disciplines
This is a British Academy and Wolfson Foundation funded network for early career researchers working in SHAPE disciplines (‘social sciences, humanities and the arts’). UCL (Keri as Co-PI) won the bid for being one of four London hosts (the others being KCL, MIddlesex, & Greenwich) in charge of hosting London events for ECRs in SHAPE from 2023-25.
‘Hear us out!’ – a youth-led podcast series
This pod aims to document the stories of young people of Tower Hamlets by the young people themselves. Funded by the British Science Association, Dr Keri Wong (PI) and charity Society Links will work with young people to understand: 1) What stories do young people want to tell? 2) What do community centres mean to them? 3) Why should adults and the public listen?
The project uses podcast as: 1) An effective platform for young people to express and share their the stories that they care about (e.g., knife crime, mental health); 2) A way for Society Links to measure it’s impact as a youth club on young people and families; 3) A self-sustaining project that the youth club can continue with beyond the end of the BSA project timeline. This project will run from 2024-25.
‘Humanizing Hospitals‘ is a UCL Grand Challenges funded project measuring the built environment factors that contribute to cancer patients’ wellbeing and mental health. This is a collaboration with Dr Lusi Morhayim (PI; Bartlett School of Architecture), cancer patients at UCL Hospital, and psychologists. The project ran from 2022 to 2023.
Validating the Social Mistrust Scale (SMS: Wong et al., 2014) in Italy is a Global Engagement funded project with the Sapienza University of Rome where the SMS was validated in both school children (N = 242) and adolescent patients with psychosis (N = 44) in Italy. The project has now concluded. Findings were presented at the Schizophrenia International Research Society Conference in Florence Italy in April 2024 and is under review. You can find the preprint here, now accepted by the journal of General Psychiatry!
‘EMPOWER-Islington‘ is a UKRI Research England project between UCL, Islington Council, and its young people. We co-created new ways with young people (ft. in ACAMH) to enhance employability, education & mental health with and for young people of Islington through five workshops with UCL academics and experts. Read our end-of-project report HERE.
BEST-EdCrim ‘Blue Sky Thinking’ Seminar Series (2022) Funded by UKRI Research England, this new virtual seminar series on Education and Criminal Justice (BEST-EdCrim) aims to facilitate new connections and collaborations between researchers and practitioners as part of my efforts to relaunch the Centre for Education and Criminal Justice (ECJ) as co-Director. The seminars took place over four Wednesdays in June involving one academic and non-academic in conversation on a key issue or question on education and criminal justice. The ECJ has been awarded the UCL Innovation Network Fund to build a network of partners with academics, third-sector leaders, and policymakers for 2024.
BE-Well Network UCL (2022) Funded by the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council Discipline Hopping Fund and in partnership with Dr Lusi Morhayim (Bartlett School of Architecture; co-I), I led a networking event between researchers in built environment and health in April 2022 and built a network for ECRs in this space to facilitate new collaborations.
COPE-Well Study (2021-22) Funded by the (UKRI Higher Education Innovation Fund, this is a knowledge exchange research project with Jamal Edwards Delve (JEDelve) charity to support and co-create mental health and life-skills resources with, and for, BAME young people.
Vax-PaC Study (2021-22) Funded by the UCL-Osaka Strategic Partnership Grant and partnering with Osaka University (Prof. Asako Muira; co-I) to examine the reasoning and consequences of vaccine hesistancy in families (e.g., parents with underaged children, <18 years).
TEACH-Well Study (2021-22) Funded by the UCL CTTR Seed Grant and partnering with Dr Eleanor Kitto (co-I) to explore the impact of COVID-19 on early years trainee teachers’ mental health.
CUES Study (2021-22) Funded by the UCL ChangeMakers Grant, this is a study of undergraduates’ access to UCL’s careers support and development services, which aims to improve existing IOE department and wider UCL careers services policies and support on offer. View study findings here. Funded by UCL ChangeMakers.
In 2022-23, CUES Study for Staff was further funded by UCL ChangeMakers Continuation Fund to help teaching staff embed career support into modules and programs across the department. Findings will be shared widely with UCL Careers, department, and IOE/UCL.
UCL Education Innovation and Edupreneurship Society (2022-23) Funded by the UCL ChangeMakers Grant, I supervise a student-led society aims to introduce education innovation and entrepreneurship to UCL campus. The team has been hugely successful. They’ve a track record of 100+ attendees at each event, leading EdTech industry collaborators, and have been successful in placing students in internships and upskilling them on campus through consultancy workshops. From 2023 onwards, they’ve gained UCL Student Union status and is funded through student memberships & sponsorships.
UCL-Penn Global COVID Study (2020-22) Funded by the UCL Global Engagement Fund, this is a three-wave online survey examining the impact of COVID-19 on individual’s social trust, mental health and physical health with collaborators from 5 institutions (University of Pennsylvania, University of Massachusetts Lowell, University of Trento, Nanyang Technological University, Chinese Academy of Sciences).
ARTSMH (2020-21) Funded by the UCL Changemaker Grant, this is a staff-student project looking at destigmatising mental health in the public through the arts. In 2022-23, ARTSMH received further UCL Changemaker Continuation Fund to further expand its presence on UCL campus through creating accessible resources for the group to continue its good work.
Doctoral Students
- Abbey Jones (DClinPsy, 1st, 2022-2024) – Completed
- Tom Milson (PhD, 1st, 2019-25)
- Pengjie Yang (PhD, 2nd, 2019-24) – Completed
- Rhiannon Hurley (DEdPsy, 2021-24) – Completed
- Tammy Hung (DClinPsy, 1st, 2021-24) – Completed
- Abigail Burgess (PhD, 2nd, 2019-23) – Completed
Current BSc students (2023-25)
- Keri will not be taking undergraduates.
Past UCL Students
- Alan Liao (2021-22)
- Henry Wang (2021-22) – MSc Developmental and Educational Psychology UCL
- Chloe Wang (2021-22) – MPhil at Oxford
- Dairu Meng (2021-22)
- Evans Feng (2021-22)
- Angelina Vlasenko (2021-22) – MSc at Anna Freud Centre
- Romane Lenoir (2021-22) – PGDL, Masters in Human Rights Law
- Sally Mao, BSc (2020-21)
- Can He, BSc (2020-21)
- Annie Fung, BSc (2020-21) – MPhil in Faculty of Education, Cambridge
- Lucile Bottein, BSc (2020-21) – MSc in UCL Neuroscience
- Yan Han, BSc (2020-21)
- Daisy Woods, BSc (2020-21)
- Diqiao Liang, BSc (2020-21), MPhil Nanyang Technological University for Mphil Communication Studies (2022-23)
- Jiayi Zhu, BSc (2020-21)
- Ioane Ene, BSc (2020-21), in Human Sciences
- Alex Bray, BSc (2019-2020) – MSc in Mental Health KCL.
- Keya Prabhu, BSc (2019-2020) – NHS Intern helping disadvantaged young people in Camden & Assistant Psychologist supporting young people under the criminal justice system. Intend to apply for a masters in Criminology and go on to a clinical doctorate.
- Marni Andrews, BSc (2019-2020) – Graduate student in Medicine at Barts and The London School of Medicine.
- Teja Kemp-Smith, BSc (2019-2020), Wellbeing Team Leader at Norfolk & Suffolk, Mental Health Practitioner
- Muna Hassan, BSc (2019-2020)
- Maryam Farooq, BSc (2019-2020)
- Sam Whatall, BSc (2019-2020) in Human Sciences, “What makes Childhood-Onset Schizophrenia Distinct from the Adult-Onset Manifestation, and how can the Differences be Taken into Account in our Management Strategies?”
- Silvia Gini, BSc (2018-2019) – PhD Univesity of Trento Italy (2022-25), MRes in Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology UCL (2019-21)
- Tak Hei Lo, BSc (2018-2019) – DClinPsy at IoPPN King’s (2022-25), Former Associate psychologist (Singapore)
- Tirso Martin Sanchez, BSc (2018-2019) – MPhil in Management at Cambridge Judge Business School Cambridge (2019-20)
- Marion Perez, BSc (2018-2019) – MPhil/PhD in Medical Sciences in Clinical Neuroscience, University of Cambridge (2020-23)
- D’arcy McGuiness, BSc (2018-2019) – UCL Student Union Activities Officer (2019-)
- Chloe Lim, BSc (2018-2019) – MSc in Song Writing, Institute of Contemporary Music Performance.
- Farhana Begum, BSc (2018-2019), DEdPsy (2022-25)
- Maira Khan, BSc (2018-2019)
- Zahra Kharye, BSc (2018-2019)
- Mandeep Bhachu, BSc (2018-2019)
- Reshma Nandha, BSc (2018-2019)
Cambridge PBS Students (2010-18)
- Grace Huffer completed her NST degree (1st) and went on to complete her degree in medicine (Cambridge)
- Renate Fromson completed her NST degree (1st) and went on to complete her degree in medicine (UCL)
- Damian Aries completed his NST degree and went on to become a Social Worker.
- Serena Tianyou Qiu completed a PBS degree (1st) and went on to complete her DClinPsych (Canada)
- Sara Silvonen complete her PBS degree (1st) followed by a MSc in Industrial Organization Psychology (KCL)
- Sarah Glew completed PBS degree (1st) followed by an Assistant Psychologist role and is now a Clinical Psychologist trainee.
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