Miriam Hiersch

Miriam Hiersch is a Research Assistant in Primary Care & Public Health at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School (University of Sussex). She holds a SeNSS-funded PhD in Psychology (2023–present), an MRes in Psychological Methods (2021–2022), and a BSc in Psychology with Criminology (2017–2021). She also completed postgraduate training in Fundamentals of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (2024).

Her research focuses on therapist personal qualities (e.g., empathy, acceptance) in psychosis care, particularly for briefly trained practitioners. She develops screening tools for practitioner hiring and evaluates short psychological interventions' impact on treatment outcomes and trust. She has also studied obsessive beliefs in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder subtypes.

Miriam works as a healthcare assistant at Mill View Hospital and is a research assistant on The Looking Forward Project. She has taught modules like Cognition in Clinical Contexts, Quantitative/Qualitative Methods, and Psychobiology as a doctoral tutor.

Languages: Fluent in English and German (reading, writing, speaking, peer review).