Professor Mark Shevlin

Overview

Mark Shevlin is a Professor of psychology at Ulster University (Coleraine) and an Honorary Professor of Psychological Research Methods and Statistics at the Southern University of Denmark. He started his academic career as a lecturer at Nottingham Trent University in 1995 and has worked at Ulster University since 1998. He teaches research methods and statistics, and supervises research projects, at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Research Focus

Professor Shevlin has published extensively in academic journals and has contributed to the advancement of knowledge in areas such as psychological measurement, latent variable modelling, and the assessment and understanding of mental health issues. His research often focuses on areas such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), complex PTSD, trauma, anxiety, depression, and the development of psychometric instruments for psychological assessment.

Research Interests

Professor Shevlin was part of an international research team that worked on the structure and diagnosis of stress disorders. He contributed to a large body of research that directly influenced the introduction by World Health Organisation in 2018 of a new psychological disorder to the ICD-11, Complex PTSD, and subsequently led to the development, validation and international clinical roll-out of a new diagnostic tool for the disorder, the International Trauma Questionnaire. He is a leading member of the International Trauma Consortium and has recently been working on the validation of translated mental health measures for use in Ukraine and other countries.

His other research interests are in the use of latent variable models, scale development, and psychometrics.

Research Awards

Professor Shevlin has been principal investigator for a number of Economic and Social Research Council projects in the areas of administrative data linkage (e.g. Prevalence and variation in antidepressant prescribing across Northern Ireland: a longitudinal administrative data linkage study for targeted support) and statistical training (e.g. Training Workshops on Modelling Mechanisms of Change Using Longitudinal Archived Data). He was the UU lead for the “COllaborative network for Training and EXcellence in pyschoTraumatology” (CONTEXT), a three-year doctoral training programme. The goal of CONTEXT was to conduct high quality, innovative research, build capacity and expertise, and foster innovative practice in the area of global psychotraumatology. The funder was Horizon 2020, Innovative Training Networks (ITN), Marie Sklodowska-Curie.

Discipline & Research Leadership Positions

As of 2023 Professor Shevlin has over 400 peer reviewed publications, and he has been cited 12,190 times in 8,591 citing articles with has a H-Index of 54. He was recognised with an award for Highly Cited Researcher in the field of Psychiatry and Psychology in 2022. He is currently the statistical editor for the Journal of Traumatic Stress and Child Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry.

Teaching

He teaches research methods and statistics, and supervises research projects, at undergraduate and postgraduate level. He contributes to the Research Methods and Statistics Summer School teaching latent variable modelling.

Research Supervision

Professor Shevlin has supervised over 30 PhD researchers to completion. He is currently supervising projects in the areas of mental health, and has a number of projects examining the prevalence and predictors of prolonged grief disorder.

Current and Recently Graduated PhD Students

Title: Social defeat: a latent class analysis examining involuntary subordination as a final common pathway towards depression. Researcher: Stephen Waite

Title: Comorbidity of anxiety and depression - an examination of nosology, measurement and overlap..Researcher: Marcin Owczarek

Title: Trauma, PTSD and Complex PTSD: An analysis of the “Children and Young People’s Mental Health in Northern Ireland Survey”. Researcher: Enya Redican

Personal Information

Professor Shevlin enjoys playing tennis, cycling, and saying “…all models are wrong, but some are useful” or "There are no true models to discover" to anyone that will listen.