Inspirational psychologist Dr Kieran Lyon launched the 2025 Queen's Academic Lecture Programme with a spellbinding insight into human personality and its impact on mental health.
Dr Lyon - a lecturer at the University of Nottingham - also gave a remarkable behind-the-scenes look into how a complex scientific research project is first set up and then developed to give meaningful and robust results.
"I wanted to look at how personality traits are correlated with mental health disorders - for example how a quality like conscientiousness might be associated with conditions such as depression or anxiety," said Dr Lyons, who has previously won awards for his teaching.
"One of my key findings was how an aspect of conscientiousness - self efficacy - can act as a protective factor for both conditions."
Dr Lyon's helpfully elucidated the many stages of the PhD research process, moving from developing a research question and initial hypothesis, through to testing this using new and rigorously collected data.
Queen’s Academic Lecture Programme is aimed at giving girls in Year 12 an insight into university level learning as they begin the UCAS application process, but pupils from Years 10 and 11 are also welcome to attend.
Head of Sixth Form Mr Wilson said: "The talk really gave us the very best of university level study with Dr Lyon bringing together both his expertise and enthusiasm in a quite brilliant way.
"We could not have asked for a better start to the lecture programme."
Dr Lyon is also a strong proponent of statistics education and has set up his own website on the topic which can be accessed through: https://www.kieran-lyon.com/