My research area is personal relationships. I investigate the ways in which attachment experiences with parents and romantic partners influence how people view the self, others and relationships. My research focuses on how models of self and others influence people's thoughts, emotions, and behaviours in romantic relationships, for example relationship functioning and caregiving. I am co-founder of the UK Attachment Network.
One stream of my research focuses on moving people toward felt security. Attachment security is associated with better relationship quality and well-being. I examine the extent to which temporarily activated attachment security (via priming) can lead to these positive outcomes in a series of studies. With my colleagues and students, for example, I have investigated the effects of priming attachment security on self-views and relationship-views, feelings of vitality and energy, pain sensitivity, mental health, and therapy attitudes. In addition, I have tested ways to increase the impact of a security prime via repeated priming in the lab, online, or via text messaging.
Other streams of research focus on attachment networks (e.g., who serves as attachment figures, how they change over time). Recently I’ve investigated the role of partners in coping with the Covid-19 pandemic, examining personal and relational wellbeing and goals. I’m also interested in close relationships and technology use (e.g., technoference).
Kelvin Peh’s interests range from forest ecology to urban wildlife in respect of diversity and distribution. He is interested in all areas of wildlife-human conflicts and wildlife ecology in human-dominated landscapes, and in the application of his research results to the conservation/management of biological resources.
Tropical Forest Ecology – Kelvin’s work on monodominance in tropical tree-dominated systems - has helped rekindle scientific interest in this fascinating, yet relatively unexplored phenomenon in tropical forests. He is the principal editor of the “Routledge Handbook of Forest Ecology Second Edition”, published by Routledge under its “Earthscan” imprint on 7 October 2024 (available at www.routledge.com/9781032348384).
Ecosystem Services – Kelvin is best known for his leading role in the development of TESSA (Toolkit for Ecosystem Service Site-based Assessment). TESSA v3.0, published on 31 Oct 2022, is now available at https://www.birdlife.org/tessa-tools/. For the impacts of TESSA, see: https://bit.ly/4ccpken. He continues working on this ecosystem service assessment project to develop and test novel tools for rapidly assessing the net impact of site-based conservation on the provision of ecosystem services. This project runs in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, BirdLife International, Tropical Biology Association, Anglia Ruskin University and UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre. Currently, he is leading the ecosystem service task team of the Asian Development Bank’s Regional Flyway Initiative.
