Dr. Claire Carson is an Associate Professor, based in the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford. She is a statistical epidemiologist, with expertise in the analysis of routinely collected data, observational studies and linked data to address questions in maternal and child health. Her research interests include equity in healthcare utilisation, as well as perinatal mental health, infertility, breastfeeding and longer-term outcomes for women and their children.

Jun.-Prof. Dr. phil. Anna Georg is Head of the Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy of Childhood and Adolescence at the University of Tübingen. Her research focus is on parent-child interactions, mental health in early childhood, transmission of mental illness and abuse, peripartum mental health, developmental psychopathology as well as innovative prevention and intervention programs for parents and their children and their implementation. She is a licensed psychotherapist for children, adolescents, and adults and head of the lab Parent-child interactions in families at risk at the University Hospital Heidelberg.

Professor Julie Jomeen is the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Health at Southern Cross University. Her focus is to position the Faculty as a major contributor to the region's health workforce and build world-leading research to address some of the biggest societal health challenges. Professor Jomeen is a nurse and midwife. Having worked clinically for 15 years, she undertook a Masters in Health Research followed by a PhD, leading to an academic career. She has led a Maternal Health research group at the University of Hull. Her own research has a key focus on mental and psychological health in childbearing women. She has published widely and gained world recognised expertise; her work has influenced international service development, assessment and practitioner training – most recently working with the WHO to develop global guidelines for perinatal wellbeing. Julie has been in University leadership for almost two decades, and is passionate about supporting health student success and evidence based practice. She relocated to SCU in 2020 from the University of Hull, UK.

Dr. Anja Wittkowski completed all of her degrees at the University of Manchester and took up her research and teaching role immediately after qualifying from the Manchester Clinical Psychology Doctorate (ClinPsyD) programme in 2001. At present she is the Health and Safety lead for the ClinPsyD programme as well as for the Division of Psychology and Mental Health within the School of Health Sciences. Since 2001 she has also held an honorary contract with Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust as a qualified Clinical Psychologist. Given her experience in perinatal mental health through her role at Manchester’s Mother and Baby Unit, she has been acting as the British Psychology Society representative for the Perinatal Mental Health Clinical Reference group for NHS England over the last few years. Dr Wittkowski is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and the founder and Director of the Perinatal Mental Health and Parenting (PRIME) Research Unit at Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation. She is interested in the assessment of mental health problems in the perinatal field including any relationship difficulties between mother and baby as well as the development and evaluation of (psychological and/or parenting) interventions to reduce maternal and infant and family distress.

Dr. Eleni Vousoura is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychopathology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) and a licensed clinical psychologist. She holds a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University, where she studied maternal psychological distress in sub-Saharan Africa. Her research focuses on women's mental health, particularly diagnosis and treatment of perinatal disorders, the effects of parental mental health on child outcomes, and the mental health of immigrants and refugees.

Dr. Tiago Miguel Pinto is Assistant Professor at Lusófona University and integrated member at the Digital Human-Environment Interaction Lab (HEI-Lab). Holding a Master’s degree (2014) and a PhD in Applied Psychology (2021) by the School of Psychology, University of Minho, he has been doing research in the field of mothers’ and fathers’ perinatal mental health, family processes, and infant development.

Dr. Mirjam Oosterman is an Associate Professor and head of the section Clinical Child and Family Studies of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She is Principal Investigator of the Generations2 study, a longitudinal cohort study on the development of mental health and parenting in primiparous women. Additionally, she is Co-PI of the Healthy Adaptation to Pregnancy, Postpartum, and Parenthood (HAP3) project, an EU-funded MSCA Doctoral Networks program that includes research and provides training to 11 PhD students in the field of perinatal care. Her research includes longitudinal studies and RCTs involving pregnant women and their partners, as well as at-risk groups such as pregnant women with traumatic childhood experiences, those facing a prenatal diagnosis of a fetal abnormality, smoking pregnant women, and women with mental health challenges or obesity. She has expertise in observational and psychobiological measures. Trained in attachment research, she is an expert in coding the Adult Attachment Interview and infant-parent interactions. She collaborates with professionals in youth care and has developed clinically feasible assessment instruments for parenting behavior.

Dr. Licata-Dandel is a Professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at Charlotte Fresenius University in Munich. Her research focuses on early childhood regulatory problems and their psychosocial and genetic determinants, the multidimensional assessment and classification of early childhood mental disorders, and the development and evaluation of psychotherapeutic interventions for young children. In addition to her academic work, she is a licensed child and adolescent psychotherapist as well as a couple and family therapist as well as a senior psychologist at the Clinic for Social Pediatrics at kbo-Kinderzentrum in Munich.

Dr. Alkistis Skalkidou was born in Athens, Greece. She completed her medical studies in the National Kapodistrian university of Athens and received a PhD in Epidemiology in 2005. She then relocated to Sweden; she became a certified specialist in Obstetrics and Gynecology in 2010 in Uppsala and was awarded the Clinical Associate Professor’s title in 2011. She now holds a joint position as Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the department of Women's and Children's Health at Uppsala university and senior consultant in Uppsala University Hospital. Main research interests include peripartum depression subtypes, prediction and effects on the offspring, as well as menopause hormone therapy and gender dysphoria. She has served as chairman of the Gynecological Endocrinology Working group of the Swedish Association for Obstetricians and Gynecologists, president of the Nordic Marcé Society for Perinatal Mental Health and member of the management committee of the RiseUp PPD and TREASURE EU COST-Actions.

Dr. Leopold Hentschel is a psychologist and postdoctoral clinical researcher at National Center for Tumor Diseases Dresden, Germany. His research focuses on the assessment of Patient-Reported Outcomes and their use in daily clinical practice as well as identifying the psychosocial needs in patients and informal-caregivers in a palliative care setting.

Dr. Rosie Perkins is Professor of Music, Health, and Social Science at the Royal College of Music London and an honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London. She has particular interest in music and parental wellbeing, and co-chairs the Music and Parental Wellbeing Research Network. Her edited volume Music and Parental Mental Wellbeing was published by Oxford in 2024.

Dr. Sheehan Fisher is an Associate Professor and perinatal clinical psychologist at Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, and Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion at The Graduate School. His clinical research career focuses on the effects of perinatal and subsequent parental mental health on infant/child health outcomes and the development of clinical interventions to treat perinatal depression. Dr. Fisher has a specialization in both mother and father mental health, and he aims to expand his work to birthing and non-birthing parents.

Dr. Karen Matvienko-Sikar is a health psychologist and Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Health, University College Cork. Her research focuses on maternal and child health and well-being. She is particularly interested in perinatal stress and anxiety, in terms of determinants, outcomes, and interventions to support women, their partners and their infants during the perinatal period.

Dr. Chiara Ionio is a psychologist, Associate Professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology at the Faculty of Psychology, Catholic University of Milan, member of the directors' board of CRIdee (Research Centre on Developmental and Educational Dynamics) and Coordinator of the Research Unit on Trauma at Psychology Department at Catholic University. She is professor of “Psychology of Childhood and Counselling” at bachelor’s degree and “Psychology of Traumatic Relationships” at master’s degree at Faculty of Psychology, Catholic University of Milan. She is also a member of the teaching board of the PhD in Psychology at the Catholic University and director of the inter-university II level master’s degree course in “Paediatric Psychology”. Her research activities, in collaboration with both national and international researchers, focus on adverse childhood experiences from perinatal periods to young adulthood. She also collaborates with the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Court of Monza as an auxiliary expert in child psychology and as a technical consultant.

Dr. Sandra Nakić Radoš is a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the Department of Psychology at the Catholic University of Croatia. She gained knowledge and experience in reproductive mental health through many years of work at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Zagreb. She defended her PhD thesis on postpartum depression in 2011, and she was a visiting scholar at the University of Sussex (UK) working in the field of post-traumatic stress disorder after childbirth. She was a vice chair of the COST Action Riseup-PPD - an international interdisciplinary network of researchers and experts, within which she co-led the development of clinical guidelines for peripartum depression. She is a principal investigator for Croatia in the Horizon project HappyMums on depression during pregnancy. She is the lead of the NGO Center for Reproductive Mental Health. Sandra is a co-editor of the Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology.

Dr. Roxanne Keynejad is a clinical senior lecturer and consultant perinatal psychiatrist at King’s College London and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, UK. Within King’s Women’s Mental Health at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, Roxanne leads research on the social determinants of women’s mental health in global context, with a focus on gender-based violence. She has research and educational collaborations with colleagues in Ethiopia, Somaliland and the European region, and is interested in decolonial global mental health research and complex interventions. Clinically, she works in a multidisciplinary team supporting the mental health of pregnant and post-natal women and non-binary people in South-East London.

Dr. Fiona Challacombe is an Associate Professor at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford and an Honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. Her work is primarily focused on advancing the understanding and treatment of mental health problems in the perinatal context, that is during pregnancy and the postnatal period. This includes adaptation of interventions for perinatal mental health difficulties and to support parental mental health in the context of high-risk pregnancies and complex birth outcomes. She is patron of the service user led charity Maternal OCD which raises awareness of the disorder amongst service users and healthcare professionals.

Dr. Raquel Costa is Tenured Associate Professor at Lusófona University, Researcher and Executive Director of the HEI-Lab. She holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology (Minho University, Portugal), and her main research interests are perinatal mental health, mother-infant interaction and infant development and mental health and healthcare.