I am a postdoctoral researcher at University College Dublin with expertise in body image and eating disorder prevention. I am passionate about helping people build better relationships with their bodies using evidence-informed approaches. As part of my PhD at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), I developed and evaluated one of the first school-based self-compassion interventions for adolescents’ body image. I then went on to work with an international team of body image researchers to develop and evaluate, BodyKind, a novel body image intervention for adolescents, in collaboration with the Be Real Foundation in the USA, which has been received by over 1500 students to date. I am currently funded by the Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Enterprise Scheme (valued at €100,000) to work with University College Dublin and Jigsaw, The National Centre for Youth Mental Health to culturally adapt and evaluate, BodyKind in Ireland in one of the largest body image trials involving 23 schools and over 1200 students. I am also interested in youth mental health and my previous postdoctoral position involved analysing data from >30,000 young people in the largest surveys of youth mental health in Ireland (MyWorldSurveys 1 & 2).

For more about my research see: https://mahonc1.wixsite.com/mysite .