Dr Sarah Butter

Overview

Sarah Butter is a Lecturer in Psychology at Ulster University, teaching in both the School of Psychology and the School of Medicine. Sarah completed her PhD at Ulster University in 2019 before working as a postdoctoral researcher at a number of institutions: Administrative Data Research Centre Northern Ireland (ADRC-NI) at Ulster University; the Stress, Trauma & Related Conditions (STARC) lab at Queen’s University Belfast; and on the ESRC-funded COVID-19 Psychological Research Consortium Study at The University of Sheffield. Since 2022, Sarah has worked as a lecturer in psychology at Ulster University

Research Interests

Sarah’s primary research interests are in the areas of mental health, particularly psychosis, as well as understanding the role of trauma and social adversity in developing mental health difficulties. Related to the topic of her PhD research, Sarah is also interested negative self-evaluative concepts (e.g., self-criticism, shame, feelings of inferiority, etc.) and their role as a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology. Her research involves using data from large-scale cross-sectional and longitudinal epidemiological surveys to examine population-level health and wellbeing using a broad array of quantitative modelling techniques.

Research Awards

Sarah’s work has been funded by the Department for the Economy and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). She is a Co-Investigator on the ADRC-NI Wave 5 project (2026 – 31), where she leads a work package examining the impact of the Sure Start programme on educational and employment outcomes.

Discipline & Research Leadership Positions

Sarah is the Co-ordinator for the School of Psychology’s annual Research Methods and Statistics Summer School. She is the an Open Research Champion within the School of Psychology.

Teaching

Sarah teaches in both the Schools of Psychology and Medicine.

In the School of Psychology, Sarah is the Module Co-ordinator for PSY111 Introduction to Psychology 2 on the undergraduate psychology programme. She has also previously contributed to teaching on PSY719 Bio-behavioural Mechanisms Underlying Health and PSY717 Social, Cultural and Family Perspectives in Health Psychology on the MSc Health Psychology programme.

Sarah is the Lead for the Patients, Populations and Society (PPS) strand of the curriculum within the graduate-entry MBBS programme in the School of Medicine, where she also serves as Psychology Lead. She also co-ordinates the Year 1 Student-Selected Component (SSC) module where she oversees mini literature reviews conducted by medical students.

Research Supervision

Sarah supervises Masters research dissertations on MSc Applied Psychology (Mental Health and Psychological Therapies) programme and undergraduate dissertations on the BSc (Hons) Psychology course. She also supervises at PhD level.

Memberships

Sarah is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is a member of the University’sOpen and Responsible Research workstream.

Research Opportunities