SCIO congratulates alumna Emiko Bell for her acceptance into Oxford’s Master of Science (MSc) programme in Psychological Research.
Emiko grew up in Kawasaki, Japan and completed a Bachelor of Psychology at Biola University. She completed SCIO’s Scholars’ Semester in Michaelmas term 2018, where her research seminar was particularly influential for shaping her current research interests. It sparked an interest in the interaction between different cultures and psychological therapies that she will pursue in her master’s and beyond. Her time at SCIO also gave her the confidence to view herself as a competent researcher who can bring positive change to communities.
Emiko is particularly interested in the ways psychotherapy can be tailored for different cultural groups to help make treatment more effective. Her postgraduate studies at Oxford will allow her to explore cultural psychology in greater detail, and she will study how cultural factors impact people’s experience of and response to emotions and psychological pain.
Ultimately, she hopes her research will lead to more effective methods of therapy by encouraging a greater sensitivity to the interplay between a person’s culture and their mental wellbeing. She aims to become a research professor and hopes to instil greater cultural awareness in the next generation of cultural psychologists.
