The MiSP Team
We are teachers who have taught mindfulness in the classroom and, having seen the benefits of it, now wish to help others use it in their schools. To this end, we are also working in collaboration with the Oxford Mindfulness Centre and the Well-being Institute of Cambridge University.
Richard Burnett, co-founder of the Mindfulness in Schools Project, is a teacher and boarding Housemaster at Tonbridge School, the first UK school to include mindfulness in its curriculum for all 13-14 year olds. He has taught .b to hundreds of adolescents and his MA paper on the subject, Mindfulness in Schools: Learning Lessons from the Adults, Secular and Buddhist, was published in 2011.
Chris Cullen, co-founder of the Mindfulness in Schools Project, was Head of Pastoral Care at Hampton School in London. Chris trained as an Insight Meditation teacher with Christina Feldman and is currently doing a Masters in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy at Oxford University. As well as teaching .b in schools, Chris also teaches mindfulness at Kid’s Company and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London.
Dr. Chris O’Neil, co-author or the .b curriculum, is a former chaplain and Head of Philosophy and Theology at Charterhouse, Godalming, where he is currently Head of Counselling and Psychotherapy. Chris’s doctoral research was in adolescent and developmental psychology. Chris recently completed his Masters in MBCT at Oxford University’s Department of Psychiatry.
Sarah Hennelly is researcher and teacher-training co-ordinator for MiSP. Sarah is studying for a Master of Research in Psychology at Oxford Brookes University and has extensive knowledge of mindfulness teaching in a range of clinical and educational contexts. Sarah recently wrote her thesis on The Immediate and Sustained Effects of the .b Mindfulness Programme on Adolescents’ Social and Emotional Well-Being and Academic Functioning.
Board of Advisors
Professor Felicia Huppert is Director of The Wellbeing Institute at the University of Cambridge. Felicia is a psychologist whose work encompasses research and policy on well-being. She headed the consortium which has developed measures of well-being for the European Social Survey in 2006 and 2012, and is a member of the technical advisory group for the ONS initiative on measuring national well-being. Felicia initiated and led the first pilot research project involving a mindfulness in schools curriculum in the UK in partnership with Richard Burnett and Chris Cullen. This took place in 2008, and published in the Journal of Positive Psychology 2010.
Professor Willem Kuyken of Exeter University has been teaching mindfulness-based classes in the NHS since 2001 and is an expert in evaluating how mindfulness interventions work. He recently completed an MRC-funded randomized controlled trial of MBCT in real world health care settings (Kuyken et al., 2008) and is Chief Investigator of PREVENT, a definitive trial comparing MBCT with anti-depressant medication.
Professor Katherine Weare is Emeritus Professor at Southampton and Exeter Universities. She has a particular interest in mindfulness for school pupils and teachers, and is involved in developing and evaluating the .b programme. She is interested in how mindfulness can interface with social and emotional learning, mental health and wellbeing, areas on which she is an international expert on ‘what works’ in evidence based practice. She has published extensively in the field, and is currently preparing two chapters on mindfulness in schools for publication.
Professor Mark Williams is one of the world’s leading experts in mindfulness. Professor of Clinical Psychology and Wellcome Principal Research Fellow at Oxford University, co-author of the highly successful books The Mindful Way Through Depression and Finding Peace in a Frantic World, his current research investigates MBCT as a treatment for the prevention of relapse in individuals with a history of suicidal depression.
