Gemma Rides

Gemma Rides is a Senior Research Associate specialising in adolescent mental health, digital wellbeing, and the development and evaluation of psychological interventions. She has expertise in mixed methods research and co‑production with young people. Her methodological strengths include multilevel modelling, longitudinal analysis, and thematic analysis. She also has experience working with complex datasets, including psychophysiological and eye‑tracking data, within multidisciplinary research teams.

Gemma Rides is a Senior Research Associate at the University of East Anglia, where she contributes to the development of a large‑scale research proposal evaluating the efficacy, cost‑effectiveness, and scalable delivery of a sleep intervention for adolescent depression and anxiety. She completed her PhD in Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London, where her research examined how social media communication and behaviours relate to adolescent mental health. Her doctoral work involved co‑production with young people ensuring that youth perspectives shaped research design, interpretation, and dissemination.

Gemma is also a member of the Division of Clinical Psychology Digital Healthcare Subcommittee (BPS). In this role, she has collaborated with multidisciplinary teams including clinicians, academics, industry partners, and policy stakeholders to produce guidance and resources that support psychological practitioners to deliver ethical and effective digital practice.

Gemma’s research focuses on child and adolescent mental health, with particular interest in the social‑cognitive development of adolescents when using online platforms (including social media) and the underlying mechanisms that can explain the relationship between mental health and digital environments. She is also interested in the development and evaluation of interventions that can be implemented within real‑world services. This includes current work exploring the effectiveness and implementation of a sleep‑based intervention.