Professor Leah Brennan is a clinical, health, educational and developmental psychologist and a board approved supervisor. Her areas of clinical research focus include eating, weight and body image (e.g., eating disorders, overweight/obesity, body image, weight stigma), and promoting the availability of best-practice psychology treatment (e.g., telehealth psychology, guided self-help). She works as both an academic (teaching and research) and a clinician.

Leah has a particular interest in the application of psychological approaches to understand, prevent and treat eating, weight and body image concerns and their biopsychosocial comorbidities (e.g., polycystic ovary syndrome, depression, stigma) in children, adolescents and adults. She leads the Body Image, Eating and Weight Clinical Research Team (BEWT). She has a range of ongoing and upcoming projects examining eating disorders, overweight/obesity, body image and weight stigma and their treatment.  

Leah is passionate about the provision of best-practice psychological treatment in the community, and the development, evaluation and dissemination of evidence-based interventions suitable for ‘real-world’ application. She also has a particular interest in the provision of best-practice psychological support in rural areas (e.g, optimising the use of telehealth psychology to facilitate access to treatment).  

Much of Leah’s academic teaching has focused on training psychologists to be scientist-practitioners by promoting the integration of evidence-based practice and practice-based research across postgraduate coursework, placement and theses.