Professor Glynis Murphy, Co-Director of the Tizard Centre at the University of Kent, is one of 28 social scientists to have recently been conferred the award of Academician by the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS).
AcSS is the national Academy of academics, learned societies and practitioners in the social sciences. It has over 900 individual Academicians, who are distinguished scholars and practitioners from academia and the public and private sectors. They are awarded this status after a peer group has reviewed the standing and impact of their work.Professor Murphy was recognised for her work on intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Professor Murphy joined the Tizard Centre, one of the UK’s leading academic groups working in disability and community care, in 1993. After a brief period at Lancaster University (2003-2006) she returned to the Tizard Centre and was appointed Co-Director in 2011.
Her principal research interests are in the field of challenging behaviour and learning disabilities. Her current and recently completed studies include: the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for people with learning disabilities who have committed sex offences; screening for people with learning disabilities in prison; the effectiveness of social care for ex-offenders with learning disabilities; and (with Dr Peter Langdon) the effectiveness of CBT for people with Asperger syndrome and social anxiety.
She has held over £1million in grant funding from Bethlem Royal Hospital in London, Department of Health, Mental Health Foundation, Nuffield Foundation, British Institute of Learning Disabilities, Wellcome Trust, Bailey Thomas Fund, National Institute for Health Research and the School for Social Care Research (SSCR).
She is co-editor of the Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disability, a fellow of the British Psychological Society, and was President of the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual Disability between 2008 and 2012. Professor Murphy won the British Psychological Society’s MB Shapiro award in December 2013 for her contribution to clinical psychology. She is also one of the Associate Directors for SSCR.
In 2013, she was appointed as Chair of the NICE Guideline Development Group for Challenging Behaviour in People with Learning Disabilities. These are the first Guidelines on learning disabilities that NICE has begun.
Professor Murphy was also one of several representatives from the University and Tizard Centre who were presented with a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education by the Queen during a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 27 February 2014.
The Prize was for the Tizard Centre’s contribution to improving the lives of people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) and their families.
The Tizard Centre is part of the University’s School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research.