Tracing an interdisciplinary journey from clinical practice and lectureships to participatory research in vision impairment and an NIHR fellowship
Dr. Aikaterini (Katrina) Tavoulari
Monday 15th December 2025. 13:00-14:00 GMT. MVB 0.3.
Behind every fellowship lies a story. In this talk, I will share mine — spanning clinical practice, teaching, and research across countries and disciplines. Drawing on lived experience and interdisciplinary collaborations, I will reflect on the challenges of academic precarity, the importance of resilience, and the value of participatory approaches to disability research. I will then introduce my NIHR Fellowship, which brings together partners from the Universities of Bath and Bristol, as well as King’s College London, to co-design multisensory, home-based technologies with youth with vision impairment to address depression.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Aikaterini (Katrina) Tavoulari (https://tavoularikaterina.com) is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society, and a Chartered Disability Practitioner with the National Association of Disability Practitioners. She brings over 19 years of interdisciplinary clinical psychology experience, including leadership in specialist disability education in Greece, clinical work at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, and lecturing in disability studies, vision impairment, psychology, qualitative methodology, and business at University College London and Birmingham Business School. She has also collaborated with the Universities of Oxford and East London.
Katrina completed postdoctoral appointments at the University of Bath (vision impairment and life transitions) and King’s College London (academic precarity and research career alternatives), and also served as a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham (disability, artificial intelligence and employability). In December 2025, she returned to the University of Bath to begin her NIHR DSE Fellowship, where she is advancing accessibility in vision impairment and depression, and challenge ableism through participatory research. Her community-based research has been supported by GW4, the British Academy, UNICEF, and she has also partnered with RNIB, Guide Dogs UK, Retina UK, Angel Eyes, and Research England. Research impact is a key priority for her, both nationally (e.g., “Goal for All” Goalball Event, 2024) and internationally (e.g., invited by the Association of Parents, Guardians & Friends of People with Autism ‘Anemoni’ and Agrinio Medical Council in Greece to support an anti-ableistic paediatric hospital environment, 2025).