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Dr Raul Szekely, BSc, MSc, PhD, AFHEA

Raul

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Email: r.szekely@qmul.ac.uk
Room Number: Room G.16, Yvonne Carter Building

Profile

I am an Applied Research Psychologist whose work sits at the intersection of social, health, and behavioural sciences and human-computer interaction. My research focuses on the design and rigorous evaluation of digital tools and interventions that support learning, promote well-being, and contribute to meaningful societal change. I adopt a participatory and critically informed approach, working in close collaboration with diverse users and stakeholders across the research cycle to co-produce technology-enabled solutions that are accessible, contextually relevant, and attentive to issues of equity and inclusion.

I completed my PhD at the University of Surrey in 2025, based in the School of Psychology and the Digital World Research Centre. My doctoral research used a multi-study, mixed-methods approach to examine whether and how virtual reality can reduce mental illness stigma among healthcare students, with a particular focus on psychosis and schizophrenia. Alongside this, I contributed to teaching across the BSc Psychology and MSc Psychology in Game Design and Digital Innovation programmes, and gained Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA).

Prior to my PhD, I completed an MSc in Organisational Psychiatry and Psychology with Distinction at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London (2021), where I received the Programme Prize for Academic Excellence. I also hold a BSc in Psychology with First Class Honours from Brunel University London (2020).

In July 2025, I joined the Wolfson Institute of Population Health at Queen Mary University of London as a Research Associate on an NIHR School for Primary Care Research (SPCR)-funded project. In this role, I lead the evidence synthesis strand and contribute to the development of a co-designed digital health intervention for people living with type 2 diabetes who are experiencing emotional distress. My work within this project reflects a strong commitment to designing interventions that are evidence-based while remaining accessible, inclusive, and responsive to the needs of underserved communities.

 

Research

Research Interests:

My research sits across several interrelated areas at the intersection of psychology, health, and digital technology:

  • Stigma, media, and health: I investigate how media representations of health conditions, including mental health, shape public attitudes and lived experience across platforms including video games, film, television, news, and social media, and develop interventions to reduce stigma in public and clinical contexts.
  • Design of digital interventions: I design digital interventions for health and behaviour change, including web platforms, mobile applications, serious games, virtual reality experiences, and AI chatbots, using participatory and co-design approaches, attending to the values and assumptions embedded in technological systems.
  • Evaluation of digital interventions: I evaluate digital interventions using mixed methods that integrate behavioural, self-report, and qualitative data, contributing to more methodologically plural approaches to understanding what works, for whom, and in what contexts.
  • Equity, accessibility, and inclusion: I examine how design and methodological decisions can reproduce inequalities in access and outcomes, particularly for disabled and neurodivergent people, ethnic minority communities, and those facing socioeconomic disadvantage, and devise more inclusive approaches to the design and evaluation of digital interventions.

 

Selected Projects and Collaborations:

  • Led a scoping review with University College London's Global Disability Innovation Hub as part of the AT2030 Programme, mapping conceptual definitions and measurement approaches used to assess the psychosocial impacts of assistive technologies for blind and partially sighted people;
  • Conducted a mini-literature review on explainable AI during a Turing-funded research visit at the People and Technology Group, University College Cork (Ireland), and proposed a psychologically informed account of how differences in cognitive effort and motivation relate to trust and confidence in AI outputs;
  • Contributed to an Innovate UK-funded project with Maudsley Learning to develop a novel, pragmatic, and user-informed quality assurance framework and evaluation process for digital mental health tools, enabling benchmarking of user experience, data security, and evidential robustness;
  • Served as a member of the Race and Ethnicity Advisory Group at the Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre, supporting the design of more inclusive and representative mental health research studies;
  • Facilitated the setup, delivery, and follow-up of large, multi-centre NIHR-funded clinical trials in intensive care units across the UK as part of my research assistantship at the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre;
  • Evaluated an online-delivered psychoeducational intervention with Maudsley Learning and King's College London, designed to support the self-efficacy, work engagement, and well-being of healthcare professionals returning to practice after a period of absence;
  • Supported a survey-based study with Brunel University London, Dalhousie University (Canada), and other international partners identifying barriers and facilitators to the uptake of health technology assessment among stakeholders in the Canadian healthcare system, partially funded by a Dalhousie Research and Innovation International Seed Grant.

 

Professional Service and Peer Review:

  • Peer reviewer for reputable journals and conferences spanning psychology, health, and digital technology, including Professional Psychology: Research and Practice (American Psychological Association), Digital Health (Sage), Journal of Advanced Nursing (Wiley), BMC Medical Education (Springer Nature), Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR Publications) and the European Congress of Psychology (European Federation of Psychologists' Associations). 
  • Member of the Cyberpsychology Section of the British Psychological Society. Previously served as Postgraduate Representative (Careers, Industry, and Outreach) on the committee and Co-Editor of the Cyberpsychology Bulletin (2025) – the Section’s newsletter and peer-reviewed outlet publishing updates, commentary, and short research articles on the psychology of digital technologies and online behaviour.

 

 

Publications

  • Müller, V., Ninković, M., Szekely, R., & Wallrich, L. (2026). Intergroup contact theory. In R.-M. Rahal (Ed.), Open Social Psychology. https://forrt.org/open-social-psychology/chapter12.html
  • Szekely, R., Armstrong, M., Geraghty, A. W. A., Edwards, J., Hardenberg, K., Lloyd, J., Hawkes, R., Ocran, N., Ramasawmy, M., Poduval, S., Turnbull, S., Dack, C., & Ross, J. (2026). Digital health interventions for diabetes distress in type 2 diabetes: Protocol for a scoping literature review focused on equity and inclusion. JMIR Research Protocols, 15, e85406. https://doi.org/10.2196/85406
  • Attoe, C., Szekely, R., Ortega Vega, M., Browne, E., Thomas, R., Kwan, C. W. T., Altchouler, P., De, A., Hariharan, N., Clay, G., Odoi, S., Cross, S., & Doe, A. (2026). The Mental Health Technology Assessment of Quality (MTAQ): Development of a novel quality assurance framework for digital mental health tools. Digital Health, 12, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1177/20552076261428307
  • Szekely, R. (2025). Commentary on ‘The Nature of Stigma: Toward a Sociological Engagement with Evolutionary Psychology.’ Deviant Behavior, 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2025.2596788
  • Bandukda, M., Xiao, L., Barbareschi, G., Oyier, P., Athiany, H., Szekely, R., Karuguti, W. M., Matheri, M. J., Austin, V., & Holloway, C. (2025). Toward a multi-layer framework to assess the quality of life impact of smartphones as assistive technology for people with sensory disabilities in Kenya. In Proceedings of the 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’25) (Article 80, pp. 1–16). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3663547.3746352
  • Szekely, R., Holloway, C., & Bandukda, M. (2025). Understanding the psychosocial impact of assistive technologies for people with visual impairments: Protocol for a scoping review. JMIR Research Protocols, 14, e65056. https://doi.org/10.2196/65056
  • Szekely, R., Mason, O., Frohlich, D., & Barley, E. (2024). Acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary evaluation of an animated VR game for reducing mental health stigma in healthcare students and trainees: A mixed-method study. Mental Health and Digital Technologies, 1(2), 173-192. https://doi.org/10.1108/MHDT-03-2024-0010
  • Szekely, R. (2024). A health psychology for all: The case of mental health in health research – Reflections from the DHP conference and ways forward. Health Psychology Update, 33(1). https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpu.2024.33.1.36
  • Szekely, R., & Ciobanu, C. (2024). Mental health and wellbeing of intensive care unit (ICU) staff: An occupational psychology perspective. Occupational Psychology Outlook, 3(1), 36–43. https://doi.org/10.53841/bpsopo.2024.3.1.36
  • Szekely, R., Mazreku, S., Bignell, A., Fadel, C., Iannelli, H., Vega, M.O., O'Sullivan, O.P., Tiley, C., & Attoe, C. (2024). The efficacy of psychoeducation to improve personal skills and well-being among health-care professionals returning to clinical practice: a pilot pre-post study. The Journal of Mental Health Training, Education and Practice, 19(2), 61-73. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMHTEP-11-2022-0089
  • Szekely, R., Mason, O., Frohlich, D., & Barley, E. (2024). ‘It’s not everybody’s snapshot. It’s just an insight into that world’: A qualitative study of multiple perspectives towards understanding the mental health experience and addressing stigma in healthcare students through virtual reality. Digital Health, 10, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/20552076231223801
  • Farmer, G., & Szekely, R. (2024, January 29). The acceptability of serious games for the management of mental health: A brief review of published work. MultiPlay - The Network for Multidisciplinary Research on Digital Play and Games. https://multiplaynetwork.org/2024/01/29/the-acceptability-of-serious-games-for-the-management-of-mental-health-a-brief-review-of-published-work-by-george-farmer-raul-szekely/
  • Szekely, R., Mason, O., Frohlich, D., & Barley, E. (2023). The use of virtual reality to reduce mental health stigma among healthcare and non-healthcare students: a systematic review. Behaviour & Information Technology, 44(10), 2116–2133. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2023.2232049
  • Wranik, W. D., Szekely, R. R., Mayer, S., Hiligsmann, M., & Cheung, K. L. (2021). The most important facilitators and barriers to the use of Health Technology Assessment in Canada: a best–worst scaling approach. Journal of Medical Economics, 24(1), 846-856. https://doi.org/10.1080/13696998.2021.1946326

Supervision

 

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