Dr Felicity Bishop MSc, PhD
Associate Professor, Programme Director, MSc Health Psychology

Dr Felicity Bishop is a health psychologist leading an interdisciplinary programme of mixed methods research around complementary therapies and placebo effects in health care within Psychology at the University of Southampton.
Placebo effects are real and powerful. Can we harness them ethically to improve healthcare?
I am a Chartered Psychologist and Health Psychologist. I have an MA in Experimental Psychology from the University of Oxford (The Queen’s College) and an MSc in Health Psychology from the University of Southampton. In 2006 I obtained my PhD in Psychology from the University of Southampton. Following some postdoctoral work I moved to Primary Care and Population Sciences within the Faculty of Medicine to take up an Arthritis Research UK Career Development Fellowship. From 2008 to 2011 I undertook a programme of research, funded under the Fellowship, using mixed methods to investigate psychosocial aspects of acupuncture for low back pain. During this period I was also a visiting researcher at Harvard University, developing a programme of work around lay perspectives on placebo effects. In 2012 I returned to Psychology at the University of Southampton to take up a Lectureship in Health Psychology. In 2015 I was promoted to Associate Professor.